“It’s too bad I’m not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.”

The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed.

Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?

I don’t talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it’s something personal – more than personal, it’s private.

The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.

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.