“My brother, who's a violinist now, was the real ham, the real performer of the family. His passion for the violin is the only thing that kept him from being an actor.”
“My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.”
“The reason I like 'Breaking Bad,' which is still probably my favorite show, is Walter White. You watch him transform, and that's so fascinating. And I think. a lot of TV shows that aren't successful, it's because the characters become stagnant.”
“There are a lot of directors out there who are very specific, visual craftsmen, and while I have the utmost respect for that, they don't really communicate with the actors.”
“There's a thing at the Museum of Natural History in New York, where I live: they have a stairwell where you follow the beginning and the course of this planet, and it's a very long stairwell, and you follow, and you follow, and then you reach the top, and we're, like, half a step on the stairwell - the timeline for us on this planet.”
“We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, in terms of, like, our nationality, our country. But we're people from somewhere else; the true 'Americans' are the original peoples. It's funny, but we're a very territorial species.”
“With a lot of shows, what you'll see happen is they start off really well, and they're very original, but they become sort of a version of themselves. They stand outside the show... they become a cliche of the show they once were. That's the whole 'jumping the shark' thing.”
“Women on the whole are often not as shallow as men are. They can be, but they cut through things a little more easily than men do in terms of that superficial stuff.”
“Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.”