After 'Muriel's Wedding,' I first went to America, and I was sent all these scripts about fat girls overcoming hurdles. Something in me knew not to go down that road, even if it was a good script.

I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.

You have to trust that the script is right and be comfortable with everything, and then you just have to go for it and disregard anything you've previously heard or felt about it.

I mean, the first 'Back to the Future' is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.

As I travel around Idaho and visit with seniors, I hear almost universal concern about the rising cost of health care, particularly the cost of prescription drugs.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

As with all commandments, gratitude is a description of a successful mode of living. The thankful heart opens our eyes to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us.

There's a film I did called 'Front of the Class', about a teacher who had Tourette's. That was a beautiful blend of drama and comedy. There's some great moments of levity in the script.

Scripture has always been a part of my life. My dad was a pastor. My mother was a speaker, writer, and teacher. I memorized Scripture from the time I was little.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

Jesus isn't lettin' you off the hook. The Scriptures don't let you off the hook so easily... When people say, you know, 'Good teacher', 'Prophet', 'Really nice guy' ... this is not how Jesus thought of Himself.

The Holy Spirit is our comforter, our teacher. That's why, in prayer, we can ask the Lord to open up Scripture and make it come alive to us, to open our understanding. He left his Spirit with us until we join him in Heaven.

We really love all sports, but we don't think in the long term. The reason we did Kingpin was because there was a script we really liked and we saw the possibilities.

This is why sports will always be the greatest of dramas; the most exciting entertainment known to man. Nobody can predict the outcome and the script is ever in flux.

There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.

My English teacher always gave me scripts for plays, but I was into sports. My friend said there were small parts I could go up for, but the director gave me the part of Mozart, which was kind of the lead role. From then on I just loved it.

Scripture suggests that the elements in space were created for the benefit of earth, while evolution suggests that earth is an insignificant speck in vast space.

We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that's where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it's instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd.

Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.

I don't smile or talk before 10 A.M. unless it's scripted.

I think we've lost the idea that politicians are part of the humanities. And we think of them as part of a natural science tradition, and we don't expect them to have the contact with literature, with history, with the richness of descriptive language that the humanities have always stood for. And I think that's a great loss.

Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.

I would be sad if it ended now. It's been the best job I've had by a long shot, especially creatively because the writing is so good. Every week I get the script and I laugh out loud and get excited for the different stuff we get to do.