I think if you're too concerned with being cool or hip or liked, you can't really make good TV because sincerity and coolness are opposites.

People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.

As a viewer of TV shows, I always like shows more when I just feel like the people in charge have a plan. You can just tell sometimes, 'Oh, there's a plan there. They have an idea for how this is going to unfold.'

I think if you're too concerned with being cool or hip or liked, you can't really make good TV because sincerity and coolness are opposites.

Despite the insanity of using whether you would want to have a beer with someone as a legitimate reason for voting for or against them, I always felt that is indicative of a massive problem in politics: It matters as much what your personality is as how smart you are or how good you are at your job. That is a huge, huge problem. A lot of people who are very smart or very good at their jobs are not people I would want to ever have a beer with - but I would want them making massive policy decisions with huge implications for the future of the planet.

It's so much easier to write for an actor than for an imaginary character and then try to fit that character to an actor. It doesn't work very often in my experience.

If the doors aren't open, just kick them in and keep walking.