I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.

I love watching the romantic comedies of the late '50s and early '60s. I used to have a rule that if Tony Randall's in it, it can't be bad.

Decline and Fall was a very depressing Evelyn Waugh novel, I think it was his first. I didn't get it at all, and then I got to love Waugh. And I think that maybe "Cosmopolitans" has a bit of an Evelyn Waugh vibe to it at some point.

I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.

I would say on the other side of the equation that there were really some massive sales and massive enthusiasm for some films that were given big releases. And I'm not really sure that happens in quite the same way, small films getting big releases. Maybe it still does, I don't know.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

I think it's really good and helpful to have the people you most admire in some other discipline than what you work in. It's too intimidating and derivative to be just totally gobsmacked by someone doing exactly the same thing as you are.