Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!) but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

Yes I do often write poems from the mind but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are you come out and hope that no one runs away.

I love making movies and hope to write my own screenplay someday and do some producing and be behind-the-scenes as well.

Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan you just hope for it.

Ironically Latin American countries in their instability give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.

Nothing you write if you hope to be good will ever come out as you first hoped.

I don't think I'm a great songwriter but I think I've learned a lot about it and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

It's possible that I've matured as a writer and I hope I've matured emotionally but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

I doubt I'll be singing forever because at some point people aren't going to want to hear my music and I hope that I'll still get the opportunity to write songs.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.

I do 280 episodes of TV a year write 15 recipes for the magazine and publish an annual book. With all of that we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge.

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that I don't think.

The hardest thing is spending twelve hours a day accommodating the rest of the world then going home at night and criticizing it. I would be curious about what I'd write if I didn't have to worry about offending.

I can write pretty much anywhere if you give me time and some quiet. The home is not usually the best place because I have four children. It's usually pandemonium around here!

So we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners directors writers everything. And what we had an idea for they didn't like. And what they had an idea for we didn't like. So we went home.

Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing public relations accounting and all that sort of stuff.