The people who seem to have a lock on power get swept out in a couple of years. So it's naïve to keep swinging at the same targets over and over. It took me a long time to realize, but most of the shackles that I flailed against were just illusory.
To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat cat politicians and secret conspiracies don't control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that.
There's absolutely no way that something I do on my own is going to be seen in Malaysia.
Launching a new TV show is probably one of the most difficult things that a writer can do.
I love that Voltaire was so willing to shock his readers with arbitrary cruelty. And I can completely relate to it.
You have to respect people's suffering. To deny that the world is unfair and painful for most of the people living in it would be false and judgmental.
I tend to look at the world more from Voltaire's perspective. Incidentally, if you haven't read Candide lately, it's a fabulous book. It's riotously, laugh-out-loud funny in a way that no Shakespeare comedy will ever be.
As a John Kerry supporter, I wanted to send him a check. But then it occurred to me that most of that money would end up in the hands of advertising agencies and television networks. And the money would be used to create deceptive commercials that flatter our point of view and shade the facts our way. And I wasn't comfortable with that. But on the other hand, that's how the game is played. You're always grappling.
I don't remember a lot of what I write. I try to release it after it's out there so that I can be fresh again.
I have nothing but respect for the purist who won't work for the pharaoh. But I'm not that strong.
I had a bumper sticker on my car for a long time that said, "Kill your television." People helpfully pointed out that I was a total fraud because I was a television writer.
I don't like that The Simpsons are spokespeople for Burger King and MasterCard and Butterfinger. In the first Gulf War, I was really upset that the Simpsons characters were being drawn on tanks and bombs. But those are things that I don't control.
I want to be tolerant of other people's beliefs. I have wonderful friends who are religious, and I don't want to say that they're dimwits. They should certainly be able to pursue what works for them. I'm just saying that it doesn't work for me and I don't want to pretend that it does.
Instead of three networks you have three hundred or three thousand. Audiences are inundated with programming, and that sometimes gives them a sense of petulant entitlement.
I guess I'm drawn to religion because I can be provocative without harming something people really care about, like their cars.
There's a built-up tension in religion, and if you can release it, you'll get a huge and satisfying laugh.
When people have no interest in a subject, it's very hard to get them to laugh about it.
I don't know what the universe is all about, but to me, nothing is gained by slapping a God sticker on it. It has never been a comfort to me to believe there's an all-seeing eye in the sky.
I don't like the antagonism that most religions have for science, and freedom and, frankly, individuality. I do like the Dalai Lama.
I guess I started to realize that being an agnostic was such a wimpy position.
For me, marriage is a grotesque, unforgiving, clunky contrivance. Yet society pushes it as a shimmering ideal.
Men often struggle with their attraction to other women. They don't quite understand why they have to be with the same woman forever.
It was peculiar to be standing so close to him. He's just a man, but still, what a thing to be Neil Armstrong!
I'm not religious. I do have a baby - a four-month old girl - and that's a religion in itself.
I resisted parenthood for a long, long time. But having a daughter has given me a sense of hopefulness that I didn't have before.
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