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.

This election ain't no stinkin' TV show.

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.

Infuse your life with action.

As an actor you always feel like you're swimming upstream.

I did not always agree, personally, on the positions that Bartlet, character from the West Wing, took and I argued against them on many occasions. But Aaron Sorkin said, "Martin, that's you, that's not Barlet. It's a very political decision he has to make." I found from the very beginning that when I infused my own personal feelings about an issue it went against the grain of the character.

I heard an Israeli speaking on Palestinian human rights issues, an interesting guy, and he said 'There's no military solution to terrorism. If there were, Israel would be the safest place in the world. But there's no military solution.'