When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.

What's realistic to me is that families love each other and stand by each other. What's unrealistic is that they would ever say that.

Television is a very writer-driven business, and it's one of the few parts of entertainment where writers are treated with respect, only because they need you. If they didn't have to treat you with respect, they would be happy to dismiss you.

When you don't have a laugh track, you can make the clothes funny. We can make a sign funny. We can make the way somebody walks funny. The makeup can be funny.

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

The joy of acting for me is to be able to experience emotions in a safe environment. You can't scream and cry in the street because everybody will look. If you do it on a movie set, you get applauded.

Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it.

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.