“I definitely have an eye on doing more work in features and playing different characters, but I am also a big fan of going on vacation and playing golf and going to the beach. With anything, it’s about finding the balance.”

When I sat down with the creators of the show [Longmire], back when we were first starting to do the pilot, Branch was not that interesting on the page. What really sold me on the show and the character was their vision for him. It took the whole first season to flesh him out.

Once a Cubs fan, always a Cubs fan.

I was growing up with a single mom who’d be at work when I came home from school. So I’d just turn on the TV. I grew up watching old Clint Eastwood westerns. I adopted him as one of my male role models.

It was a great time to grow up in Chicago. It was the mid-80s, and we had the 85 Bears and the Michael Jordan era.

Where I grew up, acting wasn’t really accessible. I was just playing sports. But, I did watch a lot of TV. I watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies on TV and had this fantasy of being like him when I grew up.

I just really enjoy the ritual of going to work and playing, which is essentially what we do. We play pretend. Acting is a kids’ game.

I was a psychology major. I think that definitely helps in general life; I enjoy trying to figure out why people are the way they are.

George Clooney had the web of celebrity from television and doing ‘ER,’ and he’s able to parlay that into films. God willing, I’ll be up there in a few years.

I love when a director shows up with a lot of energy, and different ideas about how to change things and do it a different way. Once you get into series, sometimes you don’t have that, so I certainly don’t take that for granted when I get it.

I am pretty diligent with my fitness routine. I am not like a crazy workout-holic, but I stay active.

Everybody has their own approach. I don’t adhere to any one philosophy. I learn a lot from life and people – watching and other people watching.

an optimist is the man who looks after your eyes, and the pessimist the person who looks after your feet.

It’s an accompaniment to life. It’s not something that I do to rap; I smoke when I open my eyes…I don’t know any other feeling.

How often has not the parallel been drawn and the golden age of the Roman Empire, when the external brilliancy of life likewise dazzled the eye

But the weakness comes from these Westernised co-opted Muslim leaders who just want to look good in the eyes of the West and Western media.

There are free men with the spirit of a slave, and slaves whose spirit is full of freedom. He who is true to his inner self is a free man, while he whose entire life is merely a stage for what is good and beautiful in the eyes of others, is a slave.

In mutual love the lover not only wants the happiness of his beloved; but has an eye towards his own happiness also.

In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch.

Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel.