I want to convey that I'm crazy about the Kardashians - but I'm not sure which is which.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

I had never thought of doing television. But my agent wanted me to meet John Wells, who had had a lot of success producing ER and China Beach. The night before the meeting, some friends were over for dinner and Akiva Goldsman and I slipped downstairs to the basement so we could sneak a cigarette. He said, "You know what would make a good television series? That." And he was pointing at The American President poster. He said, "There doesn't have to be a romance, just focus on a senior staffer."

If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.

There's that process of writing it - then you come out of your room into the sunlight, and you now have to complete the circuit and make the connection finally with the audience.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we're presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated - not nearly as black and white as we're led to believe.

The real problem with all drugs is that they work. Fantastically. They're great, right up until the moment they kill you.