I mean, I've sold all these scripts and nothing's been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don't get made.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it's for a live show it's usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don't get paid a lot because they're working on the Oscars show. It's the biggest show in the world.

It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

Eddie Izzard is absolutely brilliant. I would love to write something for him.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

I have one rave New York Times review framed next to a flop Los Angeles Times review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it.

I like that we don't have to come out the first 10 minutes and score, you know, with joke, joke, joke. We can open it in a more novel way and keep playing different pranks as we go through the thing.

When you go into the world you would not even notice when you become dead

It's not so much what we do that matters, but what kind of person we choose to be.

Will I see you again?”I turned to him and I shrugged. “If what we feel is real, then yes I have no doubt we will.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

You may know the intractability of a disease by its long list of remedies.

There was a time when certain producers could produce just about anything, and the label execs would say, "That's a such-and-such record. Let's put that out as the first single."

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

I grew up with the thought that I wanted to treat people the way I'd like to be treated, and I think if you do that, it's pretty hard to go wrong.

Artists erase reality to a greater or lesser extent, and substitute their own reality - created by their brains, instead.