And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people songwriters who are around.

I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician a writer an athlete or a businessman there is no getting around it. If you do you'll win - if you don't you won't.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what without this book he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women or black students behave as though they can only read blacks or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

Then I read Little Women and of course like a lot of really young girls I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

Comedy can be especially in a writer's room really aggressive kind of a very male-dominated room and it would be hard for women. It's not a nurturing place. It's not like a lot of women are going to say I can't wait to live that lifestyle and be in a writer's room until 2 or 3 a.m.

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.