“People who laugh together generally don’t kill each other.”

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff.

I’ve been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I’m nominated as actor in a supporting part.

I’ve been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity.

Loneliness is everything it’s cracked up to be.

If I don’t win, I’ll just wait until I’m nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

I was brought up as a Catholic, and I’m no longer a Catholic.

Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.

Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.

I’m not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn’t interest me.

My relationship with science is as someone who’s curious and hungry to know, hungry to understand. So all I have to offer is my ignorance and my curiosity, which is a good combination, as long as they come together.

You wouldn’t want to be called a sell-out by selling a product.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.

Everybody’s on their toes and focused on what we’re about to do, and then there’s this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can.

I’ve never tried to manipulate my image.

Really top-notch directors, I’ve often worked with them just to see how they work.

All these names we’re using now are just an illusion made to keep us fighting each other.

Christina and Isabella, and the true friendships I have in my life that are based in being real with each other and mutual love and support.

Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.

It depends on ourselves to be to each others, either a blessing or a torment.

I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don’t mean that everyone can write poetry – it’s an art, a craft.

All the truths of mathematics are linked to each other.

“What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?” Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?