Elizabeth Meriwether

I love 'Cheers.' I didn't watch it growing up, but I watched it getting ready to do the first season of 'New Girl.' It bowls me over every time I see it. The romance, the comedy, the performances - every bit of it is just so compelling.

It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.

People want to put women in one box, and I'm interested in how women can be everything at once.

The funniest things just come from honesty. We have a tendency to see female characters as representative of something larger than what they are, when male characters are just characters.

I had this temp receptionist job in New York, and I kind of hated it, and in the morning I would come out of the subway and just walk along the New York streets with all these people around me and kind of sing to myself. Like, 'She's gonna make it!'

I think so much of writing is an instinct, or a feel for a scene, or a feel for a character. You have to put into words the word 'tone,' which I think is thrown around a lot and can mean a hundred different things, but communicating that to other people is definitely a challenge.

Why do British people make such good TV? It's so annoying. Stop it. Is it because they have free health care? Uggh.

There are a lot of women screenwriters, but they are obviously outnumbered by men. And it still is a very much male-dominated industry.

I think they should create a holiday for friends-with-benefits relationships. Because I feel like Valentine's Day is, maybe it's a day to stay home and cry.

Dysfunctional co-dependent relationships always appeal to me. I don't know exactly how it started. I start writing sketches of characters and little scene-lets, and then it builds.

I started out wanting to be an actor and I like to give actors as much as possible. I love writing stuff where they can really lose control.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.