It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator our very self-consciousness is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.

The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you're only as well as you are.

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

You can't possibly fathom the ins and outs of a prepubescent beauty treatment until you've felt the strange but exhilarating tingle of a cottage-cheese-and-Pop-Rocks facial.

Because if one is writing novels today concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons for wasted effort.

It seems like the chaos of this world is accelerating but so is the beauty in the consciousness of more and more people.

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder ' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look including inside ourselves.

I think fun is an important part of the entertainment industry and it should be. Anybody who's not incorporating some of that into their work needs to take a break go away and have an attitude adjustment.

I failed the LSAT. Basically if I had not failed I'd have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome but in not trying. It is liberating.

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way it is about answering to yourself.

The alchemy of good curating amounts to this: Sometimes placing one work of art near another makes one plus one equal three. Two artworks arranged alchemically leave each intact transform both and create a third thing.

Presently the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History has been brought about to encourage and sponsor a variety of historical activities that advance our understanding of the American Jewish experience as it marks this milestone anniversary.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening May 15 1876 at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

No Arrested Development was such an amazing experience in every way and you know it was very unique in that it was a show that received a lot of critical acclaim and yet we didn't ever achieve the ratings that we wanted.

There are times when the only access I have to the truest person that I am is when I'm alone and trying to solve a sentence. It's exciting even when it's frustrating even when I can't do it right.

I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people but I really do my best work alone and I think I would want to - if I did something again I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?