After I finished 'E.R.', I wanted to concentrate on re-examining what kind of actress I am and taking time for real-life things.

I think when things happen in our lives that we can't truly understand why they destroy us, it's because we can't truly understand or communicate it to anyone else. And that is what is destructive - you can't communicate it to the people that you love and it makes things deteriorate. Or you're hiding from yourself, or you're hiding from somebody else, and that was really fascinating to me... that life isn't like the movies and you can't always point to one thing and explain why you did things that ended up hurting you.

I like diversity; I want one character to be very different from the next. I love to live with a character for a long time if I can, but I like one character to be different from the next.

I think everyone feels lost at times during their high school years.

We hurt each other because we care about each other.

People are drawn to watching things that are dramatic. And the tighter a relationship is, the more dramatic it can be. That's something family lends itself to. Everybody has family, somewhere, somehow. Those relationships are always very complex. This takes it to almost Greek-tragedy-level heights. That's fun to watch, although it's very uncomfortable. It explores the darkest sense of family.

When I was a kid, 'Scooby Doo' was, hands down, my favorite cartoon. Even when I was older, when I was in college studying and I needed to tune out for a while, I'd watch 'Scooby Doo.