Back in 2004, Kellie Overbey handed me her play 'Girl Talk' to read. I fell in love with her brutally delicious humor and the fearlessly deft way in which she drew her characters. They jumped off the page and begged me to give them a space in which to stomp around.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

Once we got over the origin story, we could really delve deeper into their lives and characters and angst. So this movie actually has more heart, more humor.

But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view, I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.

I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.

M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul. The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.

Our characters act silly, even totally ridiculous at times, and most of our jokes don't come out of pop cultural references. It seems like we're aiming at a child audience, but everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It's playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful. You can kind of let go.

With actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies, their characters had a sense of humor.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

I've gotten pretty good at leaving characters on the set. I go home and try to relax and regroup and be ready for the next day.

Doing voiceovers is so great because even though many people would think it's just your voice, you really do use all your physicality. I've done everything from playing a butterfly to Alice in Wonderland when she's 10 feet tall, so it allows you to be an actor and build new characters.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A good movie makes the audience feel like they've journeyed with the characters.

With comedy, don't try to be funny. That's really helped me. Just say the lines as you would say them, interact with other characters, and try to make it as real as possible. It will come out funny.

I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.

This will sound funny coming out of my mouth, but I like to play characters that have an intelligence. It doesn't matter if it's a physical intelligence or emotional intelligence.

Nanda and I never discussed work. Our work never came in the way of our friendship. We were both down-to-earth and very Indian. Both of us attempted glamorous roles but soon realised that it's better to play characters that were close to our personalities.

I love the fact that so many of my readers are intelligent, exceptional, accomplished people with an open-minded love of diversity. But even more than that, I love it when my readers find lasting friendship with others of my readers - knowing that they met through their mutual affection for my books and characters makes me happy!

006 was such an interesting character and the film really explored his friendship with Bond and how it all went wrong, so it was a very personal journey for both characters.

I firmly believe, only because I've been doing this for so long, every show takes three years. 90% of them don't get three years. It just does. It takes a long time to build a community, build a friendship with your characters. It's hard for people to grasp on and make them care about you.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

George Soros is one of the few characters from the world of finance who deserves to be called larger-than-life.

Normally, I name my characters after famous comedians.

None of my characters are rich or famous, and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.