The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

I spent three years working at the White House and wanted to do something that wasn't about passing bills and resolutions.

I'll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call, when my inexperience poked through, when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me. They're a reminder that it's not mutually exclusive to be confident and humble, to be skeptical and eager to learn.

I'm not insulting Trump supporters; I'm calling the people that CNN puts on television terrible representatives of the views of conservatives.

Sometimes you gotta do things that you don't really want to do. But you don't do them for money.

If your ratings are high and there's money being made, you're allowed to be a perfectionist in television.

Money has always been a particular problem for revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. What will money look like 'after the revolution'? How will it function? Will it exist at all? It's hard to answer the question if you don't know what money actually is. Proposing to eliminate it entirely seems utopian and naive.

Being horrible in a big film is a quicker nosedive than doing an obscure film and making no money.