I think as long as I can tell you a story about people that you understand, it doesn't matter if you don't like what they do; you understand why they did it.

I don't write scenes where one person is right and one person is wrong. It's very much by design that everyone has a point of view that you as an audience member can understand.

I think television is about the characters you want to see again, and so you want to invite these people into your home. And certainly, seeing them get into bad situations and then watching them have to get themselves out, that's always super satisfying.

The impetus for 'Power' was me writing about my dad, who was an advertising executive and very interested in image. He thought that perception was reality and what people thought of you was what was real about you.

Wherever I go, stuff accumulates.

Around me, there's always music playing. It just calms me down; it soothes me. It helps me write. It helps me with my mood.

I say a prayer several times a day about what I can control and what I can't control.

As a woman, I don't feel like I have a responsibility to create better female characters. I feel like I have a responsibility to create good characters. Because the truth is, those kinds of things ghettoize us even more as writers.

I worked at 'Mademoiselle,' and then it shut, and I worked at 'GQ' for three years, during which I was freelancing. I wrote for 'Vibe.' I did music reviews. I wrote for 'Time Out.' I was desperate to get into 'Entertainment Weekly' or 'New York Magazine.' Like, desperate.

I thought I was going to be a professor; then I ran screaming from there into magazine journalism.

I very much want to write about some elements of my own growing up.

When I was a little girl, my imagination was what helped me deal with some sort of negative elements in my childhood.

There are some aspects of the story of 'Power' that clearly are about race in the sense that any one of us now who's black and was raised in this country was raised with a lie, which is, 'You can never be president.' That's not true.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, taking a chance on 'Power' is taking a chance on me.

I love 'Archer.' That's one of the best-written shows out there.

I want to tell more stories about lying, dual lives, self-deception - those are my favorites.

When I'm at work, I want to be with my daughter, and when I'm with my daughter, I probably should be working, and it just is what it is.

I really try to plot in a fearless fashion. I try not to care about not knowing the answer before I get there; I just jump in first and see what happens.

The show runner's the boss until the network shows up. And then they're the boss, because it's their money.

50 Cent and I really started to bond over our love for music. The first conversations we had were about Curtis Mayfield.

The only black folks in town when I was growing up were me and my cousins and one other family.

The baseline character in a lot of Western literature is a man. So we, as women, do a lot of suspending of our disbelief to experience a novel or a play or a movie through that male character.

In 2011, when my father passed away - I had my daughter first; I had her on January 24, and I had a seizure during the delivery. I lived through that, and five weeks later, my father died suddenly of a heart attack, and I lived through that. And then my daughter had surgery, and I lived through that.

I really do love male characters, in some ways, for the fact that they get surprised when they're vulnerable. Women are more surprised by their strength.