Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.

I remember Tucker Toomey was named so because "T's are funny!" And if Garry Marshall says it's funny, by god, it must be so.

Everybody is naughty, everybody is good.

For the only time in my career, I came in and met Tony [Richardson] for the part - I did not read, I just met with him - and in the middle of the meeting, he told me that I had the part [in The Hotel New Hampshire]. There was never, "Well, thank you, and we'll have my people call your people." There was none of that kabuki that goes on now endlessly for even the smallest role.

I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.

I like the tradition of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and how they react to events which force them to be heroic in a way that is not in their natures.

I really make a point of never worrying, or trying not to worry, about the way I'm perceived. You'll go crazy otherwise.