Time off from the news is always something I welcome.

When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it.

Everyone has expectations. You just don't want to have them dashed, so you're quiet about them.

We're like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water - we can water flowers or we can water weeds.

I think a lot of Civil War stuff is written - As they say, history is written by the victors. And one of the things that I think is fascinating about this from a purely dramatic perspective is whether someone is right or wrong, you understand where they're coming from in this.

And so, however many people watch this thing, that's how many different opinions there will be about it. But I don't feel like it has an agenda in terms of its ideology. It just presents a story like a mirror. It's a mirror more than it is than a distorted mirror.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.