Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, 'It's okay, I'm from New Jersey.' I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in 'Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey.'

The only thing I have ever been asked [by a pollster] was the age at which I first indulged in oral sex (which, since it was a Yale Daily News poll, meant kissing).

Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.

According to Hollywood logic, none of the actual Titanic passengers was interesting enough, so the writer-director had to invent a Romeo and Juliet-style fictional couple to heat up the catastrophe. This seems a tiny bit like giving Anne Frank a wacky best friend, to perk up that attic.

I never got that show - Les Miz. It's about the French guy, right, who steals a loaf of bread, and then he suffers for the rest of his life. For Toast. Get over it!

I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it.

I just hate that gay role models are supposed to be just like straight people, as if even straight people are like that.