I really disliked Philadelphia society - really, deeply disliked it. I spent a lot of my teenage years writing poetry attacking it.

Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.

At Chicago I offer a course on Emotion, Reason and the Law that law students just love. But I am not there as a lawyer, my job is to teach philosophy.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

Did people care about how a singer sounded live back in the day? I don't really feel like they did. Not everything was being filmed. Today, one huge mess-up, and millions are seeing it. There's a lot more on the line nowadays. We're so cautious and scared of messing up. It adds a lot of stress to a career.

If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.

One of the defense mechanisms I have for the difficulties in the business, one of which is rejection, is that if I do the work, I go in, and I'm prepared and I audition and they don't hire me, I'm always just amazed, thinking, 'Wow! For that money, they could've had Bruce McGill, and they didn't take me? I just think that's amazing.'

You've got to build a career and a practice.