Writing is a sad process, sitting on your ass for many, many hours, alone in a room, smelling like coffee, sadness and bitterness, and watching your youth leave.

If we based everything in Hollywood on who was a nice guy, holy moly, we would have no movies. No actors would work. This is not an industry that is ruled by kindness and generosity.

I think every writer has got to direct. If you don't direct, you can't protect your work. The only way to ensure that it's going to be as close as possible to what you put down on paper - and what you see and hear in your head - is to do it yourself.

I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.

You simply cannot do a sitcom by committee. It will not work. You've got to have one or two clean, creative voices in charge, and there's got to be some faith by the studio and network in those people to make the right choices.

These television shows that have 14 shots of somebody looking at each other with the wind blowing through their hair drive me insane.

I don't begrudge anyone else for anything, but to me, I think the fans deserve to have a studio put money behind their product because when the fans put money into a project and it makes any sort of money, it goes back to the studio. I think that's a little shady.