My female writers have always been my backbone. I had a writing room of six women for five years so I know what women do. Cultivated by me, by the way!

My mom would be leaving the house and she'd say, 'Don't you pull out all of the old dresses in the attic and put on a show again!' And the door would close, and that's exactly what I'd do. The show was calling me!

I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?

With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.

In real life, a relationship takes a long time. Either somebody is involved with somebody else, and that's ending, or somebody's hung up on an ex, or your job isn't going right, and so you're focused more on that than relationships. It just takes a lot for two people to get together.

Though I know he loves me, tonight my heart is sad; his kiss was not so wonderful as all the dreams I had.

I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.

Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.