I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

Don't ever ever believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there's always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you're doing. And they're going to work harder than you if you're not working hard.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America like America love America and then work.

What are people going to do? Fire me? I've been fired before. Not book me? I've been out of work before. I don't care.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work ' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end and if it is I am the only one who can win it.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes ' he said his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. 'Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it's going to work or whether I'm going to fall flat on my face.

In a very real sense it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

For me every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?

Men are going to go out on the road and they're going to find other women. So if you really want to save yourself a whole lot of heartache do not fall in love with somebody in a band. Just don't.

Because of what's going on with the economy I think women are realizing that maybe they don't need a closet full of clothes. They just need the right clothes.

Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where's that going to get 'em? Besides divorce court?

If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren it will be women who make it so.

Bias has to be taught. If you hear your parents downgrading women or people of different backgrounds why you are going to do that.

Women should stop going for the bad guys stop looking so far when the good ones are right there.

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'm someone who's done the opposite of whatever the received wisdom is to keep your career going into your 50s.

If you have a vaccine or an antidote that people can benefit from you're not going to want to keep it to yourself. You're going to want to spread that wisdom or whatever to as many people as you can so everybody can benefit from it.

It seems to me that in every culture I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities all is vanity.'

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool the truest heroism is to resist the doubt and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted and when it be obeyed.

You have to find out what's right for you so it's trial and error. You are going to be all right if you accept realistic goals for yourself.