Michael C. Hall quotes:

I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

I like to think I am well-mannered. If I have the option at a breakfast place, I'll go with the grits. That's how Southern I am.

I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame.

Honestly, I think some of my family members of a certain generation were more skittish about me playing a gay character on Six Feet Under than watching me play a killer.

There are no secrets in life; just hidden truths that lie beneath the surface.

I never really considered acting as a career until I moved to New York.

I certainly know there are people in positions of power in the business who lack imagination and, perhaps as a result of that, think of me as 'David'. But I wouldn't really want to work with those people, you know?

Yes, I mean, There's nothing like it. There is an added sense of pressure because of that, but there's also nothing like the thrill you get being in the same space with that audience right there and then. And when you do it, it's over.

Sometimes men present a swagger that suggests a prowess, whether it's sexual or financial. L.A. seems to be a place where trying too hard is almost a given. Some people are unapologetic about how blatantly they represent who they are through what they wear or drive. Subtlety is in short supply.

I mean, the competition is really created by the buzz around the Emmys. It's a totally subjective thing.

As time passes, I feel more and more a sense of acting being a fundamental part of who I am.

I'm very focused on "Dexter" right now. I want to make it as good of a show as we can.

It's interesting to play a role where you don't really have to preoccupy yourself with any need to convince yourself that you're not acting.

I think we're really - we're doing a really great job doing our show, and other shows are doing a great job doing theirs, and we'll just see what people have to say.

So it's really nice after about a year and a half to get back on stage and flex those old muscles.

People feel like they know me from the work I have done, but it's not me.

Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way.

For me, it was more a dramatic shift to go from the stage to the screen.

I have this dream where Little Chino keeps showing up at my door. I would have to kill him even though I was at home trying to have a nice meal with my family. Every time he (Chino) would come to the door, I'm like, 'you again!' But I was myself (not Dexter) in the dream. I'm rolling my eyes in the dream because it is so absurd. It was like, this is ridiculous because you (Chino) are not even real!

I think Dexter is a man who ... a part of himself is very much frozen, or arrested in a place that is pre-memory, pre-conscious, pre-verbal. Something very traumatic happened to him, he doesn't know what that is. And I think on some level he wants to know. He denies his humanity, he describes himself as someone who is without feeling, and yet I think that he maybe suspects - in a way that maybe isn't even conscious yet when we first meet him - that he is in fact a human being.

Marriage, children-you never expect it to end in tragedy. Unless you're me.

My mother is a survivor who's had a lot of things happen in her life that have been very trying.