I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.

I always tend to think just left of center, to remove myself from the world by one step. It is very freeing, and it's a particular way of coming at stories and looking at them that I find the most beautiful stuff that I know comes from, ultimately.

Buffy' is about growing up. 'Angel' is really about already having grown up, dealing with what you've done, and redemption.

I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw.

Comedy to me is all about the bumps and bruises and weird tics.

The rationale for tenure is still valid. But the system has turned the academy into one of the most conservative and costly institutions in the country. Yes, conservative: Economists joke that their discipline advances one funeral at a time, but many fields must wait for wholesale generational turnover before new approaches take hold.

I wasn't drawn to comedy: it was drawn to me - from fighting in school to going to jail, then joining the military and getting into Hollywood.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.