Cal Ripken is steady, he focuses on his job, and he's a good guy.

I grew up in a family where the internalized understanding was that the kids were going to grow up into a better world. I worry, because I don't think my kids are going to have that. The world is very scary. The world would be scary without the choices the current administration made, but they just exacerbated it. And it ticks me off. I want my kids to have a good life.

Take action. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes but at the end of your days, you will be remembered for your gallop, not for your stumble.

The issue for my character, and the issue of the show is, how dirty do your feet have to get without suffocating yourself in the mud in order to get an inch of what you really want done?

Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.

Having an affair with an intern is just an incredibly stupid thing to do.

You need to be real enough to be believable, but you don't necessarily have to be real enough to be real. There is a distinction.