Things get very distorted when you do a movie, weirdly so.

Kids in general make things fresh and alive and they have this great appreciation for, Holy mackerel, we're making a movie!

What does it mean for an actor to make a part his own? It means that he takes on what you had intended and starts to put in his own stuff so that it becomes something that could only happen if he played it.

Media reporting denied privacy to anybody doing what I do for a living. It was no longer possible to work on your picture in privacy.

Things get very distorted when you do a movie, weirdly so.

I had a marketing idea that everybody hated, decency is sexy.

Great things that can happen when you're doing a movie.

I took some time out for life.

I think you have a pact with an audience in every picture, and I think the pact is to try and be truthful and to be real.

I value comedy. I value somebody who can be funny.

I have a lot of nightmares.

You become so obsessed, and that's not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it's the whole world.

I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.

Tone is up for grabs in what we do - what's the tone of the scene.

A lot of things just aren't true any more.

I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens.

I'm big on research.

I always fight hard to push a movie to the point where it pulls me.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person.

I came to 20th Century Fox to do movies, and then they started a network, and they asked me to do a show as part of their starting what became the Fox network.

I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.

I laugh every day. There are days when my laughs are pretty hollow. Dust comes out of your mouth, and your bones make a funny sound. But I'm laughing.

I love it if comedy reflects real life because to me it's more reassuring that we'll get through.

I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.

Linking up the things you were with the things you become is what growing up is.

When you work alongside somebody day in and day out, the relationships tend to be wonderful: they're lifelong.

I am more into guys' fashion, but I'm inspired by women's fashion in a weird way.

When the 'Guardian' is commissioning writers to write obituary pieces about you and your career... it doesn't get much nastier than that. And you've just got to go, 'It doesn't actually matter.'

For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time.

I think the fans of the old-school Internet shorts were a little bit older just because it was racier material.

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.

True love is deep spiritual affection.

My mum used to tell me to never boil my cabbages twice, and I think it's artistically valid. While I do find myself on similar themes in my books, I try not to repeat myself, and that's something which is all too easy to do in series books.

I'd say the best is when I was in Africa, I saw a hippo in a house. Someone had a pet hippo. And they're meant to be one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, and they had one that was sort of just wandering in and out of their house, just sort of roaming about.

In the heat of the battle, it's always different than when you go back and look at it on film.

My dad used to ignore me when I was a kid. He couldn't stand my voice, so he just used to ignore me, and then he'd impersonate me.

The first and great commandment is, don't let them scare you.

The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.

I find more of an authenticity in people who are a little strange - so I really like characters who are just the tiniest bit weird. I find enormous comfort in that - someone who's kind of normal just doesn't feel as true.

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage.

People call me a whole lot of things, but above anything else, I'm a fighter, and it's going to be hard to accept an identity without that.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.

If you take suede leather and put it on a piece of steel, and put moisture on it, it actually sticks.

It's become unfashionable to celebrate political achievement, and Labour achievement even less so. And it's positively uncouth to be proud of something that this Labour government is doing. So, slam me for saying so, but I'm really proud of the NHS.

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.

Unless you try to do something beyond you have already mastered you will never grow.

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

Journalists immediately think of me as a resource for a quote or comment because they know that I will be available to offer fresh insight and meet their deadlines.