If you can figure out where you fit into any particular story, you'll be okay. When you're not quite sure where you fit in, you try to be too many parts of the story. You gild the lily. I see it all the time.

Dr. Cox mentors the rookie doctors with a spoonful of dirt and then a cup of sugar. I see him as an archetypal descendent of two of my favorite curmudgeonly characters: Lou Grant and Louie De Palma.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.

I see myself as a story teller.

You can't drink too many otherwise you can't see what you're throwing at.

It's not trickle down economics. The problem that the president has is that he's rudderless on the economy. I mean, he doesn't quite know what to do. It's a wake-up on Monday and try to figure it out. It takes time to turn a supertanker, so you need to know where you need to go.