You really don't settle on an idea until you're really sure it's the best idea. Then once you settle on it you commit to it entirely. That was always the plan.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

I got a lot of texts from friends and emails from friends and most of them were just pure jealousy.

You should be nice to people because it's better to be nice to people than mean to people, not because you think there's something in it for you.

The first joke I got on the air I remember clearly. Dennis McNicholas and Robert Carlock wrote a sketch where they were evacuating the Titanic, and the last two guys on the entire ship were the two black guys, Samuel L. Jackson and Tracy Morgan. So Will Ferrell was running back and forth, saying, "All first-class passengers get in the lifeboat. All second-class passengers and third-class passengers get in the lifeboat. Let's get all the animals in the lifeboat. Let's put all the empty luggage in the lifeboat."

The best shows are always the ones that are very, very low-concept and just about great characters.

In a world where your interactions with humans are solely about rating one to five, two things happen: One is all humanity is lost in the name of fake pleasantries and also there's no nuance to that system. There's no room for complex interactions that are rich and meaningful.