I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.

The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.

If the doors aren't open, just kick them in and keep walking.

Sometimes you've got to just commit to the idea and press forward and trust that you made the right decision.

You can't just sit around in leopard-print slippers and drink champagne all day and think everything's gonna work out somehow.

I stopped using Twitter for a while just because I got sick of it and I started using it again, but I don't check the "mentions."

You really don't settle on an idea until you're really sure it's the best idea. Then once you settle on it you commit to it entirely. That was always the plan.

I got a lot of texts from friends and emails from friends and most of them were just pure jealousy.

You should be nice to people because it's better to be nice to people than mean to people, not because you think there's something in it for you.

I think if you're too concerned with being cool or hip or liked, you can't really make good TV because sincerity and coolness are opposites.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

It’s important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country.

We don't get to see ourselves the way the Lord sees us, but we can choose to believe what He says about us.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I'd be writing hit songs every minute.

Beware the man who only has one gun. He probably knows how to use it!

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

Using clichés is a substitute for thinking

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.

So far as musical pedagogy is concerned - And by extension of musical creation - Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived

You know, after the film I said to myself, "It's a good thing you were so stupid not to be nervous. If I'd been nervous, it would have ruined the whole thing.

Just as Lincoln got contradictory advice from the extremists of both sides . . . so now I have to guard myself against the extremists of both sides.