I'm still divided in my principles and what I think is right and what I'm actually able to do, whether talking about writing or being a citizen or being a husband or being a father. And I'm trying to get better.
I just read 'The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.' To be married 25 years, you have to put as much energy as I put into being an actor or being a great football player into being a better husband and a better father.
Whenever you get involved with talking about rights, you're talking about being a citizen. You're talking about being a citizen in capitalism; you're talking about what rights are granted to what identities, under what laws, and all that is a big mix. Marriage is, among many other things, a formality to channel capital through a family. And that's why the big DOMA lawsuit was about paying too many taxes! "I wouldn't have had to pay all these taxes if Theodora had been Theo" - that was the big tagline. It's all about protecting assets.
Fame is not just about being able to get out of a limo in Leicester Square, it's about trying to get into your house when there are eight photographers outside. When you think about being famous, you don't think about all that stuff. You think about the glamour.
Being able to influence the outcome, being able to do something about it, to be able to stop the bleeding. You're not being useful if you're just standing there going "Oh, that's awful!" You're only useful if you actually do something about it and I think that goes for everything. If you actually do something about what's in front of you, then you are actually contributing and you haven't got time to be self-centred or sorry for yourself. You should be doing something about the person you really should feel sorry for.
To me, being masculine means being a great guy, a kind and loving husband, and a hard worker, and being honest, taking care of your family, being a good father, and being brave.
People talked about being a parent, or being a mother or a father. We don't talk about "wiving" our husbands or "friending" our friends, or "childing" our parents. We just talk about being in a relationship with those people. You don't measure whether your marriage was good based on whether or not your husband is better now than he was 10 years ago, or whether your friend is richer than when they first became your friend. The relationships between parents and children is a kind of love, rather than a kind of work.
If you give up on your principles I don’t think that’s being pragmatic... Doing the wrong thing, even partially, isn’t being practical...if you have the right ideas and are forceful enough...I think you can get the support you need.
We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.
The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.
A good wife is someone who thinks she has done everything right: raising the kids, being there for the husband, being home, trying to do it all.
I think a lot of people want people who actually have qualities they don't find attractive as a way of being able to change them. It's fascinating, because people think if they can change the other person, they can change themselves. It's a complex phenomenon. It's a fantasy that's actually about being able to come to terms with ourselves.
Being alive is being aware, being able to be touched and moved and changed, being able to respond rather than to react, being able to see and hear.
Whether we are talking about access to affordable birth control, feeling safe from violence in our homes, or being able to earn the same amount of money as our male counterparts, these are rights that all people deserve, and they are being threatened.
So it's not really whether you talk about politics, but how well were you able to do it. Peter Gabriel and Sting get away with it...U2...the examples are there, of people being able to carry these subjects in the music, and the audience is absolutely able to embrace subjects that aren't just the stuff they already know about. And they're actually able to learn stuff.
Being able to get a big body to change direction, I think that's huge. I don't think a lot of tight ends incorporate that enough. I got a lot of that from playing hockey when I was younger, being able to play on the inside and outside of skates, as well as on the basketball court, being able to put my foot into the ground and crossover.
What I believe in is being transparent and truthful and always trying to get the facts right. People will make their own judgment of whether or not they want to trust you based on how transparent you are with them and the principles that you bring to the game.