I survived many a youth hostel bunk room reading Tolstoy by flashlight.

It was important for me early on to find the voice of each character and figure out what was unique about them and their individual worldview that I could use for comedy or conflict.

I naively thought I would quit television writing, move up to Seattle, my novel would come out, and then I'd have a novel writing career, and so I found myself really stuck in this very poisonous self-pitying state and felt like I'd never write again. And I blamed Seattle for that.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world. I always had a mind for characters and dialogue, and my head was filled with that stuff, so it seemed like a good place to start.

Stuff that I write isn't as similar to the stuff that I'm in, but I don't really care. I just do comedy.

You can sometimes sneak a political joke in, which is sometimes the most effective place for a political joke - when it's not expected. It's just the most fun thing to do.

It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.

It's almost a joke how good I am at charades. Not to pat my own back, but I'm literally - I'm kind of unstoppable.