It's always interesting to challenge yourself to say, 'Is this the best you can do?'

I think movie sets can often be stressful, and people take themselves very seriously.

I have had moments where I've had mental-health issues and I've felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help.

People sometimes seem surprised because often, you know, you know, there's a lot of tortured characters in the stuff I write.

I can be really annoying, but I also feel like I'm a nice person.

If I have a male protagonist, it's a studio movie, and if it's a female protagonist, it's an indie movie. That's just how it is. It's not about the studios. It's about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren't interested in the woman's story. They just aren't.

I'm attracted to polarizing characters who upend the civility of life.

You want to work with people who you like and have an easy rapport with.

I don't feel the breath of a thousand people over my shoulder.

My favorite thing is being able to follow my inspiration, and the freedom of being a writer is hard to beat.

Most of the shows I've worked on have aired three times and are in the dustbin of history.

Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.

It's fun as a creator to make something that allows multiple interpretations.

I just think there are certain men who feel like engaging in a story told from a female point of view is somehow a feminizing experience. And that itself is something that they're almost supposed to not want to engage.

There's something very touching to me about someone almost communicating to themselves in some way - trying to come to some deeper understanding of yourself and having compassion for yourself.

I remember I grew up in Pasadena in a very, kind of, homogeneous, kind of, suburban existence and then I went to college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. And there were all these, kind of, hipster New York kids who were so-called 'cultured' and had so much, you know, like knew all the references and, like, already had their look down.

I don't even give my scripts to friends because I just feel it's, like, I don't need one more set of opinions.

I think living in our culture right now, there's a universal experience where we feel like we become what we do. Sometimes that's rewarding and sometimes that creates an existential crisis.

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

I grew up in a religious family, and we weren't allowed to listen to rock music.

I used to have a road-rage issue.

As an actor and a writer, the anxiety about doing TV is that you start to feel like you get married to one tone or one kind of idea and you feel like you want to be able to express a lot of different things.

I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them.

You come to a point where you realize your work doesn't save you.

The purpose of making people feel uncomfortable is to play with their preconceptions.

I still think of Heaven as a liberal-arts school.

What I find frustrating about scripted television is that it's rare that you are surprised by how you feel about the character, or how you feel about the show.

It's always interesting to challenge yourself to say, 'Is this the best you can do?'

To me, this is from a Buddhist perspective or whatever, sometimes people who are working out their political beliefs, they can rage against the man, and yet at the same time can be oblivious to their own way of stepping on the foot of the person right next to them.

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture.

You can come to a political position from an emotional place.