When you watch the sitcoms that were the big hits when I was growing up, TV was still just TV. It was allowed to just be TV. There were three channels that were competing for the whole family and you couldn't take your business elsewhere.

Emotionally, shows like 'Cheers' and 'Taxi' were classic sitcoms when I was growing up.

I feel like I am a good person and a professional, very able leader of men.

There's the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there's less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

Activism is very seductive, and writing is painful and hard. It's very scary to have a death threat living over your head. Activism is very sustaining. But I don't view myself as a political person. I'm just someone who desperately wants to stay alive.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

There's been a slow death in a way. On the positive side, there are films getting into the Academy Awards that wouldn't have, but on the negative side, financiers are now dominant and making all the decisions. I can't count the ways a director's vision is compromised.