Christopher Meloni

“It's great to be recognized when I'm looking for a table at a crowded restaurant, but I still don't put it to best use. I'm such a lump. I won't cut the line. It's my Catholic guilt. I gotta get used to it.”

“If I could only get people to rub my belly for good lucky and then throw money in my fountain, it'd be a perfect world.”

“My mother raised three children on her own and my dad was a doctor working 16 hours a day.”

“But when you're a working actor - and that's what you keep saying in your head, how blessed you are to have a job - and you are working with heavyweights, working with the best guys in TV, it's pretty cool. Exhausting, but cool.”

“I think Chris Rock at the Oscars was a great example. I thought that was intellectually hilarious. The Gap starts a war with Banana Republic... That to me was funny.”

“I didn't get into acting to be a public service announcer or an advocate and yet, by virtue of this show and how we handle the subject matter that we've been given, that's kind of how it's evolved in certain ways.”

“We're real fortunate to have such a unique cast.”

“The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.”

“It is a weird feeling to have people go, 'Hey Chris' like they know me. But, number one, 99 percent of my experiences have been really cool. People couldn't be nicer and more positive.”

“I've got the best of all worlds. It's every actor's dream to wake up in New York City and go to an acting job rather than to a restaurant to wash dirty dishes. And I live so close to the studios that I ride my bike to work.”

“I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays.”

“If you take life at face value, it loses its luster pretty quickly. If you go after it, you get more out of it.”

“I still have a dream of one day - I would love to hire a semi-retired contractor and just build a house - him and I building a house for me. I would truly love to do that.”

“I think we present extreme aspects of human behavior and hopefully get at times, messages across or bring issues to the table or as we so often say, shed light into the dark crevices of human nature.”

“But I came from a conservative Republican background.”

“I like intellectual journeys.”

“I think to be a successful comic, you have to be exceptionally smart and exceptionally perceptive.”

“I have worried about getting pigeon-holed, but now I think I've done enough weird, offbeat stuff not to be. And I also know that I do things for the right reasons: I've made my money, so I don't have to say yes to anything.”

“I'm a nudist at heart.”

“We went online to surrogacy agencies. We interviewed lots of people - and I have to say, with all due respect, some of them were freaks. I was very leery of the process the whole way through.”