“I always saw myself as a big-nosed, big-eared kid. I’ve never tried to kind of capitalize on that stuff. I think a lot of people do when they can.”

Acting’s always felt like a kind of creature that lays dormant and collects observations when I’m not working. And then when I’m actually doing it, it just rises up. But everything I do is more about curiosity and investigation than it is about performance.

People have different ideas of who I am. And I think because I’m very private, people make up the strangest ideas of who and why and what.

All my favorite movies are American movies since I was a kid.

Kids can’t see us bombing, and then listen to us talking about getting guns out of the schools. How can we tell them to solve problems without violence, if, in fact, we can’t show an ability to solve problems without violence?

My mother is an amazing woman. Not only did she manage the entire household, she noticed a gift in each of her kids and instilled confidence in all of us that that gift would take us wherever we wanted to go.

I love bowl games. I really do. I like it more than the kids do. I grew up a poor kid in western Pennsylvania, and I went to Nebraska because I saw them play in the Orange Bowl and I wanted to play in a bowl game. I cherish the memories.

You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.

I was a good kid, but I was just very chatty. Teachers were rarely entertained, but occasionally a child was, which was enough for me. Everything was so urgent. I needed to say it immediately.

People are also dying from vaccinations. Evan, my son, died in front of me for two minutes. You ask any mother in the autism community if we’ll take the flu, the measles, over autism and day of the week. I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids.

They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who’s getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t know how to promote homosexuality.