I didn't really have an interest in politics when I first entered the workforce. What I wanted to do was help people who grew up like me. When I was a kid growing up in Tucson, my father lost his job and we lost everything - including our home. We lived in an abandoned gas station for two years until we were able to get back on our feet.

I lived for two years in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity after my parents got divorced and my stepdad couldn't get a job. So I think a lot about families like mine who were middle class and struggled. So that experience really drives my philosophy.

You should never take military intervention off the table. When you do so, you give an out to a rogue nation or rogue actors.

As you know, I did not support the United States' engagement in Iraq and have long had concerns about Afghanistan... But I obviously have always been 100 percent supportive of our military.

Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.

The glacier was God's great plough set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth.

In 2006, I made the decision to go after my dream. I was living in Atlanta and had a promising career in marketing, but I took a leap of faith and decided to move to New York, enroll in graduate school, and pursue acting.

I often feel that my days in New York City, that I was here for five years, didn't get one job, went on a thousands of auditions and literally did not get a job on a soap, not a movie, not TV, not nothing, although I did do some commercials thank God.