The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and prisms reflected all possible futures. Books are lighthouses erected on the dark sea of time.

Of course, Bronx is also useful as a kind of living personality test. If Bronx likes you, it's a [darn] good sign.

I had studied William Shakespeare in Oxford, England and I had this sort of high faluttin' education but I had also worked in comic books. So, I wasn't too proud to work in something like cartoons.

Certainly if it's something you created, like Gargoyles was for me... on the one hand it becomes you and the other writers as well. It's not like it's a one man band by any means, but at the same time when something's really working, when you've got a group of characters that really are clicking and humming, they begin to tell you what happens next. It just all begins to feel right and that was true about Gargoyles. Not true about every show I ever worked on, but it was definitely true about Gargoyles.

I've been fascinated with gargoyles since I was a kid. I took a high school trip to Europe, the 8 countries in 5 weeks kind of trip. Even then I collected postcards of gargoyles. Then I sort of forgot about it. You flash-forward a few years and I'm at Disney, we're looking for an idea to base a show on. I was running series development at the time at Disney TV Animation. And we came up with the Gargoyles comedy series. Which didn't sell!

Gummi Bears was actually an adventure comedy. It was great fun, it had this terrific backstory, a show created by Jymn Magon. The candy was the inspiration for starting the show in the first place but the series that was created was really great. We felt that Gummi Bears never got the respect it deserved. I don't take any credit for Gummi Bears. Gummi Bears was up and running by the time I joined Disney. I thought it was a great show.

When I got out of college I worked for DC comics. I worked on staff there and I also freelanced for them for about a decade. I spent two years on staff as an editor right out of college. I'm from Los Angeles and I came back here after a couple of years in New York, to go to Graduate School at USC. I wasn't thinking specifically about animation although while I'd worked at DC.