Normally death scenes are good, if you have a significant death scene and it means something it's like the audience has an attachment to you being killed that's a good thing.

I keep mementos from everything I've done.

You get ideas from other people all the time.

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

Very few movies I've done I regret being involved in.

In the old patrician world there was a custom once a week you had to eat a meal with your slaves and get to know them as people.

It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.

I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.

Matt Weiner is an amazing writer. He's one of the best, greatest writers that's ever written for television, or just written.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

In the middle of difficulties lie opportunities.

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting.

I was approaching the age of 40 with a substantial publication record, but had not yet held any position in a chemistry department.

Would PBS go so far as to give air time to an even more extreme kind of disinformer, a Holocaust denier?

It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right.

Working with a great director is wonderful for an actor because it means that you're not forced to take the advice of an idiot.

The world is your catwalk, so just remember this when you're out there.

I cannot even imagine college. I'm white-knuckling it just letting my son go to kindergarten for eight hours a day.