Probably your first agent is going to be some guy who also handles dog acts.

If you can learn to be incredibly passionate about your work without fighting for it just because it's yours, that's a huge thing.

There are a huge amount of people who sell a TV pilot, every year, but most of them never get produced. It's very easy to make a living and never get anything produced.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.

The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.

When somebody would come in with a sketch that was not so good, you figured out in a room how to make that sketch work.

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

I liked writing, and I loved movies, obsessively loved movies, but I had never made the leap of thinking I would actually come out here and write stuff.

Do not read books to escape reality. Read them to understand the reality you live in.

If you like it, you'll find a way to justify it.But if you don't, you'll find ways to falsify it.

What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

Keeping your family together is an extraordinary feat - especially in the face of great conflict.

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

Male philosophers coin phrases -- 'virtue is its own reward' -- and female workers embody them.

Part of life is to live it, and enjoy it, and seize the moments that you find particularly pleasing.

There's usually a rhythm and a melody in my head, and that creates an emotional state

We have to build the country that we want to see our future children and grandchildren live in.