My first pilot gig, in fact my first job in television, was 'Freaks and Geeks,' and the experience of directing that pilot was probably the single most formative of my directing life.

I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.

You hope for that with anything, but with a TV show, the writer and the actor being the right mix are more important than the actual writing of the pilot because you hope it's something that can have a long life.

In general, I've been treated well by reviews, and there are times when I haven't. The truth is that I've come to feel like I'm better off without reading them.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.

Parents and teachers alike are alarmed by this top-down approach to education that wrongly ties education money for states to the adoption of academic standards that do not fully reflect the values of South Carolina.

Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever.