PAUL RUST

I want to give every single character the dimensions and complexity of a main character.

I don't really like the term 'honest.'

In real life, there are some times where a partner has cheated on somebody, and that person never found out about it. I have to imagine that that's happened before. It's a thing we don't really want to think about, because it's maybe the most painful thing to think about in a relationship - 'What if I've been cheated on and never knew?'

I was going to go to a midnight screening of 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' in college, and it's the sort of thing where people dress up. So I got dressed up, and then I got lost. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over while I was wearing a Pee-wee suit. That's a hard ticket to get out of.

The challenge in writing a show that's about people and their flaws is that it can easily tip over - okay, I'll sometimes watch something, and there will be characters that are written in a way that I'll know that the writer just hates human beings. They're expressing this misanthropic point of view with these detestable characters.

Love takes a lot of work.

If you read scripts, you would see people rarely speak like that in real life, in complete sentences.

Me and my comedy writer friends talk a lot about how we love 'Die Hard,' but we'll never be able to write 'Die Hard.'

I remember watching Quentin Tarantino accept an Academy Award for screenwriting for 'Pulp Fiction.' If I'd known then that 15 years later one of his movies would again be nominated for an Oscar and I'd be in it - that would be pretty crazy.

The thing that I like about Pee-wee is it can exist on the level of midnight college cult movies that the hip kids are into and, at the same time, it could be something a kid and his family watch together. Being able to straddle both lines of being subversive and, at the same time, very inclusive - I love that about the character.

I would never turn down an invitation to co-write another Pee-wee Herman movie!

I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great!

I always liked the 'Mad Men' philosophy where people don't really change.

I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit.

It's a lot of people's goal to be the lead in a movie, and that was never my goal. I just wanted to be the third banana in an ensemble comedy.

I'm married now, but I fell in love with my wife because she was talented. Talent - it's the big one.

I grew up in Le Mars, Iowa, and even though it's a great place to grow up and be raised as a kid, there wasn't a lot to do. It was fairly boring, and I think the way I either escaped the boredom or found a way to keep myself occupied was through movies and TV shows.

I grew up loving Pee-wee Herman. I was obsessed. I was the kid at school who everyone knew was obsessed with Pee-Wee.

It would be easy for someone to think growing up in a small town would be like 'Footloose' or something, that it would be, 'No dancing allowed!' all the time, but it was quite the opposite. People always got excited for me and my successes and supported me even though I was a little weirdo goofball.

I'm not the first person to talk about this, but L.A. is just sort of a weird city because it's just a bunch of little towns put together under the umbrella of L.A. So people feel disconnected from each other and far apart, and in a relationship, that can also be a thing.

Scott Aukerman and Judd Apatow are two people who I owe a lot to, and it's always great to work with Scott whenever I can.

I try not to rely on pop culture references as a crutch for jokes, because then, I think, that's when the timelessness quality is lost.

The thing that I get most excited about is that it does feel like a new realm of storytelling is being created before everybody's eyes. You can do something that's not exactly a movie and not exactly a TV show, something in between.

I've noticed, as a comedy fan, that I really like Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino because when they're funny, they're actually funny. It's not like when other dramatic writers have comedy, and I'm just like, 'Well, that's not funny. Why are you even trying to make a joke here?'

The first three times we met, I don't think I remembered anything. I was just in this daze like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm sitting here with Paul Reubens.' And I kept almost calling him Pee-wee.