You can't just sit around in leopard-print slippers and drink champagne all day and think everything's gonna work out somehow.

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

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

Sometimes you've got to just commit to the idea and press forward and trust that you made the right decision.

I stopped using Twitter for a while just because I got sick of it and I started using it again, but I don't check the "mentions."

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 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.

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.

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.

For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.

Drinking the mystery punch that will always get her

Ironically, since Obama was elected, for the first time in my life I'm sometimes not proud of my country.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.

Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.

He's a winner. There's no doubt about that, and it's stating the obvious to say that he's a tremendous talent. (on David Beckham)

I did ask Larry David, "How did I get so lucky? How am I here Seinfeld?" He just said, 'Well, when you say your name over and over it just has a really strong rhythm: "Marisa Tomei. Marisa Tomei."

I want people to feel good about listening to this [Delta Machine] record, to get some kind of peace. It's just got something magical about it.

He should be envied Who when his strength is spent lays down his life. Old age reserves a melancholy fate For noble souls before their life is done.

There's not really much destruction in New York besides the weather and it's a natural force so it's not like any destruction. But LA gets leveled (laughs). That's my comment to Hollywood.