In my mind jealousy would come with seeing people do something that makes it all look extremely easy when it's not, like artists who can draw better than I can. In college, I was different. I was so hungry that anyone else who was published - I couldn't deal with it.

Bike riding is where I go to solve all the problems. I know you can't tell from looking at me, but I'm a long distance bike rider, I'll ride my bike and by the time I get back I will have solved whatever problem I had creatively or found that other thing that I was looking for. That's a big part of it.

The one thing that Jessica [Johnson] and Miles[Morales] have in common is that there's a great many people in the audience who were desperate for that kind of material. They didn't say anything, didn't tell anybody.

I was listening to the inclusiveness of Spider-Man, and why he's so appealing to so many people, but I didn't connect it all at first.

It was a very excellent day over there at HBO/Cinemax when they bought 'Powers' . I felt like I graduated television college, because they make amazing television. The person who said yes to Veep said yes to us, which made me feel very good about myself for five seconds. Which my self-loathing doesn't usually allow me to feel. Even I could not say that that wasn't a fun day.

I see this with experienced writers, too: They worry so much about the plot that they lose sight of the characters. They lose sight of why they are telling the story. They don't let the characters actually speak. Characters will start to dictate the story in sometimes surprising, emotional, and funny ways. If the writers are not open to those surprises, they're going to strangle the life, spark, or spirit out of their work.

I was on the set of the first Powers pilot, and an actor of color came up to me and said, "When I was a kid, my friends wouldn't let me play Batman or Superman, because I wasn't their color. But they would let me play Spider-Man. And that's the difference." And I realized I had heard this story a hundred times from different people, but I wasn't there in my head yet.