Both my parents were working in politics when I was growing up, so going on stage was not that great a leap.

I know this is a weird niche, but a lot of my female friends have these strange stories where there their dads have seen the small successes of their daughters and have decided that they are creative as well.

Something that's good in the mini-culture of 'Happy Endings' is that the goal is to try and make each other laugh. There is a pretty high bar, and you want to make the writers laugh, and you want to elevate what's already great material - and also, we're like, 'Who is even watching this? Let's just go for it.'

With agents, I've learned to bring them into the process when I feel confident. You're the only one that can really know what's right for your career. You're on a wing and a prayer through most of it.

I could not see myself going back into the studio without Tommy Dowd, our beloved producer who passed away in 2002. Then in 2009, Michael Lehman, my manager, really pushed me to meet with T Bone Burnett. I ended up meeting with T Bone in Memphis, and we hit it off right away; I knew he was a guy I could work with.

I spent a lot of time in churches. If you go to a synagogue, someone is always asking if you're alone, if you're married. In a church, in a hundred years no one would ask.

One of the most common criticisms of romance is that the genre is too prescribed: If every romance novel ends happily ever after, don't the stories lack complexity? Don't the readers get bored?

I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.