"Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them."

"More and more NFL players have been willing their bodies to science so that their brains can be studied even if they die of other causes."

"The death of anti-gay hate speech is no doubt being hastened by the head-spinning speed with which gays as a group - to say nothing of gay marriage - are becoming an unremarkable and even quite traditional parts of American life."

"The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves."

"I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl."

"I was just a kid and I didn't have a dad. That's hard, because when you're a kid, you blame yourself for everything. And I blamed myself for him not being around, for my parents not being together."

"I definitely try to mix humour into anything I do, even if it is into a drama."

"In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government."