My interest in community is what fuels my work as a writer, more than just wanting to write or just wanting to have a TV show.

On Sunday morning, it's Brooklyn Bagels on Beverly Boulevard. We get them hot. Then we walk some of the famous Silver Lake steps or hike in the hills to the highest vantage point to see the reservoir.

All writing is propaganda for the self.

Your first job, I tell people I mentor, is managing your affect. Be nice and say nice things. Make it so that the people walk away from interacting with you and say, 'That was fun.' That will make them want to come back and do it again.

I used to think that, when I was a director, I would have a very specific vision of what everything would look like, but now I am more of a camp counselor.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

I'm very aware that just driving blindly towards money won't get me anything. I drive blindly towards making the world a better place.

I guess a show like 'Entourage' would be wish fulfillment, right? But 'Entourage' is wish fulfillment for men. It's that you can be kind of schlumpy-looking and have access to someone famous and find yourself at a pool party surrounded by girls in bikinis.

I love TV, I love writing, but I love movements more.

We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.

Every project is a race between your enthusiasm and your ability to get it done. Go fast. Don't slow down. A year from now, new things will interest you.

The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.

For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'

Some of you guys are going to boo, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't like dogs.

I love a kind of shambling outsider protagonist who always feels like they're 'other.'

My purpose as an artist is to heal the divided feminine in our culture. Well, okay wait, that sounds incredibly cheesy and like something a massage therapist might do at Esalen.

I've always been really interested in how people's identities are shaped by where they come from and how they want to get away from where they come from.

After 'Nikki' and 'Steve Harvey,' I had written on a show called 'The Oblongs,' which was pretty well respected and had a lot of 'Simpsons' writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.

What I have to offer as a writer/director is the stuff with the feeling in it.

If you're in a room and can be seen by actors, you need to understand that you can be felt by them.

From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.

I've been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero's journey that we're all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers.

Normally, I think the people you would use on your first film, it would be a real struggle to bring them with you onto your television show. I just brought every single person with and expanded my little indie film world.

At East Side Jews, we can take a risk because it isn't all about the rules. I started it to create a space for all those people who wouldn't go to temple because they were scared of getting the rules wrong.