Although I considered putting my eight years of Boy Scout experience and love for our nation to the test by joining the military, I did not want to put myself in a position where I might be commanded to take the life of another, and quickly ended my flirtation with military service.

I wanted to be a genetic engineer. That was my goal in college. I wanted to figure out what the codon sequence was that causes replication in a cardio myopathic virus. That was my goal.

People used to behave morally because they thought God was always watching - in some ways God today is the collective, and the collective is watching.

I feel like a fraud... My name is not even actually Ashton. Ashton is my middle name.

Whether it's being a leading man, making TV shows, being with my family, I've learned a lot.

I certainly don't think I'm deserving of taking up space forever as a human. There's a whole generation of people yet to be born that are going to be so much more evolved than I am. I don't want to take up space. They're going to be better equipped to make the world a better place than I am.

I'm from Iowa, we don't know what cool is!