The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.

If you feel tired midway through, give Neil Patrick Harris a Red Bull and throw some sheet music at him.

I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to write scripts for television. I wrote for my comedy act. Then I wrote screenplays, and then I started writing New Yorker essays, and then I started writing plays. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the New Yorker essays, but they were comic. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the '90s. In my head, there was a link between everything. One thing led to another.

There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they'll talk back to you.

...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.

I didn't worry if a bit got no response, as long as I believed it had enough response to linger.