I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.

I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing. I missed her first words. I missed her first steps. I'd leave work before she woke up and got home after she was asleep and didn't really know her. So it was important for that reason to reintroduce myself to the family after all of that hard work.

Families are like puzzles. They fit together in a certain way, and if one piece is missing, it throws everything off.

I remember the day Richard Nixon won in 1968. That was a time that seemed certain to bring about long awaited seismic change in America. But events of tragic proportion took us on a turn. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were suddenly dead.

Things happen to us and reaction is sometimes tough to measure.

I am one of the lucky ones; believe me, I haven't forgotten that.

I still have the mentality of someone who doesn't know where he's going to sleep and doesn't know if he has enough money for gas to get to the next job interview. I don't think that mentality ever leaves, you know?