The best escalator to opportunity in America is education.

I'm sometimes embarrassed by how clinical I can become when I'm out reporting.

I've always been interested in public health approaches because it seems to me we have this yearning for silver bullets, and that is not in fact how change comes about. Change comes through silver buckshot - a lot of little things that achieve results. That's a classic public health approach.

Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them - and us.

Why are fanatics so terrified of girls' education? Because there's no force more powerful to transform a society. The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.

The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them.

The wilderness is healing, a therapy for the soul.

We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We're in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

The Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, is in northwestern India near the Pakistani border, and it is a delightful place to contemplate the draw of faith.

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.

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

Even when powerful men stumble, they inspire fear.

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

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

Give me a rock, and I will roll it.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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