I think Dexter is a man who ... a part of himself is very much frozen, or arrested in a place that is pre-memory, pre-conscious, pre-verbal. Something very traumatic happened to him, he doesn't know what that is. And I think on some level he wants to know. He denies his humanity, he describes himself as someone who is without feeling, and yet I think that he maybe suspects - in a way that maybe isn't even conscious yet when we first meet him - that he is in fact a human being.

Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way.

Marriage, children-you never expect it to end in tragedy. Unless you're me.

It's interesting to play a role where you don't really have to preoccupy yourself with any need to convince yourself that you're not acting.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

I like to think I am well-mannered. If I have the option at a breakfast place, I'll go with the grits. That's how Southern I am.

Honestly, I think some of my family members of a certain generation were more skittish about me playing a gay character on Six Feet Under than watching me play a killer.