In Hollywood, you kind of trick yourself into feeling like you have impact.

I'm on the board of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which is run by Dr. Stacy Smith - she conceived of the inclusion rider. What I love about the inclusion rider is it uses the fact that Hollywood is based on hierarchies, and it knows that these key players have persuasive power.

Smash together the Grammys, Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys, and you get the Green Room at the Kennedy Center Honors.

If women who don't help women get a special circle in hell, I think women who do help women should get a special cloud in heaven.

An executive producer with an all-male writing staff once inadvertently revealed his deep, dark fear. While discussing a full-time position for me, he mused out loud, 'I wonder if having a woman in the room will change everything.' Of course, what he really meant was: 'I wonder if having a woman in the room will change me.'

The Pulitzer Prize was established when Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911, leaving a bequest to create the eponymous award. An immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer struck it rich by combining the 'St. Louis Post' and the 'St. Louis Dispatch' to make the - wait for it - 'St. Louis Post-Dispatch.'

The focus on male politicians extends beyond clothes, legs, and pretty faces. It's hard to find an article about former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich that doesn't mention his mop.

The average career span for a TV writer is 11 years. The only other thing I could find that had the same career span was a police dog.

I turned 40, and things started to go south.

By June 1990, I'd racked up 'written by' credits on both 'Newhart' and 'The Simpsons.'

My first joke that ever aired on 'Late Night' was for a list of 'Top 10 Least Popular Summer Camps.' My contribution - 'Camp Tick in beautiful Lyme, Connecticut' - squeaked in at No. 10. Like a trip to Camp Tick, my time at 'Late Night' faded into memory like a short session at a dicey summer camp.

The Kennedy Center Honors reflects our humanity and higher purpose. We are a great nation, in part, because we value culture.

Together, we must all remember that one of the most effective responses to hate speech is more speech.

Garry Shandling's stand-up specials were masterpieces of tightly crafted stories that delivered both hard jokes and hard truths. He was neurotic and self-deprecating, and his observations on life cut deep.

Albert Brooks. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Larry David. The best comedic actors play broad and real simultaneously, coming across as both larger than life and all too human.

Moms Mabley blazed a path for female stand-ups in a housecoat and floppy hat. Phyllis Diller worked equally hard to make herself unattractive to men and non-threatening to women.

It's notoriously difficult to get actors to go on record speaking about other actors. Such requests are usually met with terse replies from publicists explaining that their clients are on set and too busy to reply.

Jenny McCarthy has used her celebrity and sex appeal to attract attention to autism. And while no one questions McCarthy's determination and passion, many scientists have debunked her anti-vaccine message and her claims that a gluten-free diet can provide a cure.

Retaining a child-like sense of wonder is a boon for creative types like Steven Spielberg and J. K. Rowling.

Howard Dean is no longer the brilliant mastermind of the Fifty State Strategy that enabled the Democrats to storm the White House and Congress. He's the idiot wearing an ugly sweatshirt.

Like Lindsay Lohan and Lauren Conrad, Barack Obama is addicted to his BlackBerry.

In TV, you look to make characters consistent, but in real life, we're not consistent. Sometimes we're brave, and sometimes we're not. Sometimes we're very aggressive, and sometimes we back right down.

The first Emmys I went to was in 1990 when the five nominees for best comedy were 'Designing Women,' 'Golden Girls,' 'Murphy Brown,' 'Cheers,' 'Wonder Years.' Three and a half were created by women.

I'm a little sad that they actually came up with the metaphor of waves for feminism. By definition, a wave goes in, and it comes out. I would really like it to be a tsunami that creates a flood that forever changes the landscape.

You want a diverse writers' room, not because it's the fair thing to do or the right thing to do, but because it's the best thing to do for your show. I've seen that to be true.

I think empathy is undervalued in a lot of these comedy writers' rooms.

Unfortunately, my system for tracking down funny female writers isn't methodical. It's mainly based on word-of-mouth, which can cast a limited net.

Moral licensing comes into play when people rely on past behavior to dismiss current prejudiced behavior. This is better known as the 'Some of my best friends are...' defense.

Everyone - male and female - is biased. But no one wants to admit it, so our brains search for examples that disprove the accusation.

One of the great things about being in entertainment is you have access to the media. People pay attention to you.

Studies do show that in hierarchical structures, you do get more harassment. There's more power concentrated at the top, which means there's more abuse of power concentrated at the top. And every TV show is very much a hierarchy.

There's this perception that there's a pipeline problem for women and people of color. I don't buy into that. I think we have a broken doorbell problem, and there are plenty of women and people of color standing at the doorstep trying to get in the door, and nobody's opening it.

Writing for TV made way more sense than writing for magazines. And by sense, I mean money.

I think, in all fields, there's this motherhood pay penalty where, the second you become a mother - and this is true whether you give birth or adopt - you're perceived to not be as committed to your job. Whereas men are perceived as breadwinners who now need more money and promotions because they're fathers.

Hollywood is built on relationships, and the way you keep relationships is by playing nice.

The desire to keep doing what we love supersedes the desire to penalize bad behavior.

In the writers' room, I know the difference when someone brushes up against me and makes a sexist crack and when they've stepped over the line and made me feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

I'd like to see David Letterman adopt the inclusion rider on his Netflix show.

When threatened, the nervous system sometimes goes into a 'freeze response.' You assess the risk and determine that fight or flight doesn't help you. Staying put does.

Misogyny - and racism - are 'hidden in plain sight,' and the burden of eliminating them should fall on the institutions, not the victims.

In over thirty years working in TV and movies, I've never had an exit interview or contributed to a 360 assessment.

If I were to write a sequel to 'Lean In' for men, I would call it 'Make Room.'

Give me a rock, and I will roll it.

Hollywood is hard on everyone, but it really is harder on women and people of color.

Making someone laugh is the simplest, most basic positive human connection.

Even when powerful men stumble, they inspire fear.

To be happy about the fall of one powerful man is to know there are another 10 that need to follow.

Writing is not what you start. It's not even what you finish. It's what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see.