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.

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books they can often learn about their own books.

I probably wouldn't be a songwriter if I didn't grow up the way I did. It was difficult and it was at times very scary to grow up in a household so unsettled and at times very violent. But it also I guess it earned me a sort of wisdom at a young age that's served me well.

If to live is to progress if you are lucky from foolishness to wisdom then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers alas have to be fools in public while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

Who knows for what we live and struggle and die? Wise men write many books in words too hard to understand. But this the purpose of our lives the end of all our struggle is beyond all human wisdom.

The only medicine for suffering crime and all other woes of mankind is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

On the publicity tour of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding ' I was asked over and over again if as the writer I felt it was a fair depiction of real life to have someone of my er below average looks hook up with hottie John Corbett.

I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

War continues to divide people to change them forever and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.

I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.