“It’s a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved – people’s ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It’s dramatic, it’s interesting, and I think it’s something we can all identify with to a degree.”

And they all have something to offer and making the story better and bringing their vision to what you see in the frame.

I don’t think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.

I refuse to buy a PS3 or Xbox for my home for fear that it might ruin my life.

In politics, it’s very theatrical. There’s a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.

Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you’re dealing with a lot more characters.

The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.

In Washington, if you’re a congressman or a senator or the President, you make much more money than the average American, but you’d think that if you were the leader of the free world you’d be making major bank, and you don’t.

I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole – I was an advance man.

At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk – games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.

Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices.

In the best possible scenario, whenever you get notes from people, they’re good notes, and they see things that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and they make you a better writer.

You just have to re-wire your brain when you’re shifting from the stage to the screen, or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.

We all experience power struggles in our lives – at the workplace, with our friends, in our love lives. In a way, we’re all politicians.

When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won’t meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It’s the perversion of idealism.

Pot is a better drug than alcohol. I’ll prove it to you. You’re at a ball game or a concert, and someone’s really violent and agressive and obnoxious, are they drunk or are they smoking pot?

I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games.

Starting early and getting girls on computers, tinkering and playing with technology, games and new tools, is extremely important for bridging the gender divide that exists now in computer science and in technology.

We have a guy from Switzerland who is just playing the game in a way I haven’t seen anyone – and I mean anyone – play before.

I think it’s almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

But that’s the thing about basketball: you don’t play games on paper.

My overall knowledge of football specifications, the overall process that happens on game day with the footballs is very limited.

All the backs in the history of this game are the same when there isn’t any hole to run through.