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.

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 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.

I just really like writing and making television shows. There are ego rewards in doing battle with other television programs in prime time in the main season. I suppose there are times when I might look at that and think that's the major league. But when you look at it, ultimately would I really want to gamble my livelihood and my ability to connect with my fan base or write a show that I really like writing, or in some cases direct a show that I really like directing, for the sake of winning an ego battle? It's totally not worth it. That stuff is so ephemeral.

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 came to accept in myself a long time ago that I really do like writing articulate sociopaths.