One thing about my dinner parties - they're never planned. I go to the grocery store, and I buy whatever is on sale. I get a lot of it, and I just send out a mass text: 'I just bought food. Dinner's at 8. Text me if you're coming.'

This is a fickle industry. Here today, gone tomorrow. I don't want to spend all the time reflecting. I want to spend it doing.

I prayed fervently for a series regular job on a show that had the perceived caliber of talent that '30 Rock' had.

There is absolutely nothing that you can control except showing up and doing your job.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always thought it very important to be happy inside. There's a lot of bad things happening in the world, but it's important to try to stay happy and appreciate what you've got, and don't look externally for the happiness.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

The idea that modernisation makes for enhanced national power and rapid progress and helps everyone achieve greater happiness has its origins in the astonishing political, economic and military successes of western Europe in the 19th century.