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Why not provoke some thought and get people talking about things? I like characters that are flawed because we all are. When people break up in a script, you think, Oh, right, there must be tears shed here. But maybe the fact of the matter is that they're both laughing.

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling.

The hallmark of a good comedy is that it can make you laugh, but it can also take you to the point where you're in love with these characters, and you want to see them be happy, and you want to feel that emotion for them.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.

Some comedians love their characters. I don't fall in love with mine. In fact, I get tired of them very fast. You have to be willing to throw it all away.

I'm not interested in characters who aren't broken. I'm not interested in happy people. It just doesn't draw me as a writer.

I'm always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters.

I fall in love with characters when they're out of their element or are uncomfortable and you really feel for them in a knee-jerk sympathetic way.