The things the writers have me doing on 'Suburgatory' are insane. I think they think it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would.
Indian writers have appropriated English as an Indian language, and that gives a certain freshness to the way we write.
What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.
Writers are always diverse on the inside.
Ed Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.
I love to publish new writers, and we do so consistently. But a lot of contemporary American poets sound alike to me. They want to bring spoken, prosy language into poetry and I understand that desire. But they don't edit. It's not very curated work. It seems very lackluster, very uncareful. It may be the un-carefulness is also something they intend but there's a kind of "So what?" quality to a lot of it.
I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.
What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.
Writing, at its best and truest, can offer solace and salvation for both readers and writers.
Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.
I have always been a HUGE Star Wars fan since I was like 5 years old. Most of us in the writers room at Family Guy were big nerds growing up and could recite almost any scene from Star Wars.
There's a marvelous and unique man named Frank Gilroy. He's the only writer I know who absolutely, pointedly refuses to do any changes that he doesn't feel are absolutely essential and totally in keeping with his own view and perspective. But not too many writers are that independent and that strong-willed.
Comedy writers have the most fragile egos.
As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.
I've seen a lot of the United States, having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country, and instead of learning about it through a textbook, I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.
I wake up to an email from the writers with the new script, and I always get so excited because I know it'll be better all-around than the script from the week before.
An excellent precept for writers: Have a clear idea of all the phrases and expressions you need, and you will find them.
None of us know where our stories come from. That's why writers make fun of people who ask us where we get our ideas. . . because we don't know.
As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.