Our pasts so many times determine the value of what is happening today. Everybody is midway in their story.

Place colors everything; It is the thing by which I find my way in my fiction.

My parents were farmers' kids from South Dakota. My dad was an engineer. I wanted to be responsible and major in something pragmatic.

I was writing a third novel when my kids arrived. And I looked at that book about whether these two people would get together, and I thought, 'I don't care! I've got kids!'

Celebrity is death - celebrity - that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

Franklin was the best known of the Founding Fathers. His death could not go without some sort of official notice. The House of Representatives, after listening to a brief tribute by James Madison, voted to wear badges of mourning for two months and then got on with business.

In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.

In my experience as an actor over so many years, I don't know when I have been touched so deeply on so many levels as I have been by 'The Leftovers' in my three years there. It is a profound exploration of life, of grief, of loss.