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I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut - or get angry from the gut.

Fans always say they laughed and they cried while reading my books. And I tell them that I laughed and cried while writing them.

And that's what the audience was feeling too, as they watched the show and as they watch it now. And overriding all of that is the way it was written. It was written honestly. There was never any manufactured laugh. There was never compromising of character.

The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop.

You can't instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.

I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.

I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.

Many of my cartoons are not a belly laugh. I go for nostalgia, the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the tug in the heart.

I get verbal diarrhea in the writers' room. I just tell everyone a million anecdotes and stories and craziness, and we all double up on the floor laughing.

By laughing at me, the audience really laughs at themselves, and realizing they have done this gives them sort of a spiritual second wind for going back into the battles of life.