I really gravitate to the comedy of tonal contrasts. I hope that doesn't sound insufferably pretentious. What I mean is people having reactions to things that seem inappropriate, or being happy in an apparently unhappy situation.

One of the things that I have always been interested in is the actual experience of people in their lives as opposed to what we think their experience should be.

I'm fortunate to have had my own level of success. My joys in life are I've got three little kids, and I got to buy a house that I really like, and everyone should have that.

Everybody should have a television show. Let's all get television shows!

I really like transgressive characters that have an alternate world view. I've actually written a fair number of kids movies, and I'll insert these kid-friendly articulate sociopaths who are usually yelling at the children for their own benefit.

I'm always looking for what's something that Bradley Whitford's character can say that is completely outrageous and completely wrong, but in a double-reverse way is actually totally right. I don't really like where there's a story and you lay a few jokes on top of it.

I have always been drawn to characters, and this was true for my feature-writing career as well, where there is a tension between rule-breaking and rule-following.