I think my strength is to do a take all the way through. I am definitely not someone who can do a sprint. Maybe I am not that smart, but it takes me a while to find the moment, and I like to be pushed toward it.

I'm a very political person, and I make political choices in my movies.

In that way, as an actor in particular, you're powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can't make mistakes.

I didn't know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea.

I want, overall, to trust what I know is right. There have been many times when I haven't.

Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends - who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me - trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time. Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things.

As much as I am one for real human interaction, I also want to make a show that's entertaining and that people want to see.