I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner; it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.

...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.

I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'

There's nothing good on the television; let's burn a witch. It must have been terribly exciting to live in those times.