I remember feeling a huge amount of anxiety and worry and pressure. At that point I was headed into acting school. That was 100 percent the only thing I thought I wanted to do. But then I got through my first year of college, and I was, like, humming and rolling around, pretending to be a lion in acting classes at NYU and visiting our classmate Charlie Gregg at Harvard, where he was actually learning things. So I changed my mind: I decided I actually wanted a different kind of education, and that was an incredibly freeing idea.

There's nothing more important than a good story.

Moving. Someone said this to me a long time ago, it's bhuddist saying, I think: 'There is no wasted effort'.

Like my dad, I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.

All TV shows are basically part of the same storyline.

I came from a Sorkin-like project in the sense that there was no freedom to change a line, which, in a weird way, is its own freedom because you're living within that structure and know this is what it is. You just adjust. Every project has its own personality.

I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I'm not even sure is important to me.