I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.

Growing up, I remember watching 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'L.A. Law' and being so obsessed with it.

I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.

Because I was such a student of pop culture growing up, I love that on the list of things that I got to work on in my first years out of college were 'Scream' and 'Dawson's Creek' and, ultimately now, 'The Vampire Diaries,' which generations below me grew up on and can quote. I love that. I think that is the coolest thing in the world.

The key to success is action, and the essential in action is perseverance.

One measure of your success will be the degree to which you build up others who work with you. While building up others, you will build up yourself.

High-quality public education - combined with other appropriate support, as needed - is the best way to achieve the Oregon Business Plan's goal of reducing the number of people living in poverty.

I don't attribute an actor's great success to their own individual performance when it's something as collaborative as a movie.