When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves.

I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'

My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a '70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school.

One of the things I learned as a young semiotics nerd was that if you have plot moving forward, no matter how banal the facts of it, simply the fact that the plot is rolling forward makes you wonder what's going to happen next, which creates suspense. So you can control peoples' attention simply by having things move forward in a story.

Filmmaking involves a lot of money and hard work, which should not be wasted, though nobody knows which film will be a hit.

Yes, in socialism the rich will be poorer - but the poor will also be poorer. People will lose interest in really working hard and creating jobs.

Money is always a motivating factor, but money has never been my driving force. In my first fight, I paid the promoter in order for me to fight. I was in the hole 300 bucks for that. Money has always been a byproduct of me doing something I love.

I don't think one moment that we should sink to the levels of the Brexiters - the dodgy money, the electoral lawbreaking and the lying - but I do wonder if those of us who remain deeply concerned about the consequences of Brexit are really landing all the blows that we can.