The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor I'm just gonna tell her 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you they can't really fire you and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'

People don't want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows. That's why comedy writers do well - we put out little funny ideas.

I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

Ray Bradbury is for many reasons the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be should be and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible willing to tolerate and to teach happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

When Ted Williams was here inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago he said he must have earned it because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way I'm proud to be in this company that way.

The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that despite human failings the Simpsons are really decent people.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.

Who is more to be pitied a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

The things the writers have me doing on 'Suburgatory' are insane. I think they think it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.

As a freelance writer I'd be asked to become an expert for various magazines on any subject whether food or wine or history or the life span of veterinarians. I was completely unschooled in any of these things.

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef ' I feel is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor I'm obliged to follow their vision.

Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in and what we're going to eat is hotly debated.

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

I had a fear of becoming anything a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor but if you become a doctor that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open your field is the entire human condition.

Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.

There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure which most songwriters are.

More than fantasy or even science fiction Ray Bradbury wrote horror and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence or to be optimistic or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.