RICHARD LAGRAVENESE

Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.

The woman who runs the Pennsylvania Innocence Project told me that there's a man she's been trying to get out of prison for 26 years. Every night before she goes to bed, she thinks, 'What is he doing?' She says you don't sleep. And yet, she has the greatest sense of humor and this light that comes out of her.

When I was young, I had two older sisters, and since I was the youngest in my family, my mom took me around with her all the time. I was forever with her when she was having coffee in the middle of the afternoon with her three sisters. And they would talk about men. I absorbed a lot of that.

I always thought that if you don't feel the breath in the actors' bodies, you lose all the intimacy and truth.

I had to audition as an actor, and I got so tired of doing the same monologues over and over, so I started writing my own, and then I started selling them to other actors.

'Thelma & Louise' really hit a nerve, and I loved that movie.

In 1996, Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' was removed from classrooms after a school board passed a 'prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction' act. Apparently, a young female character disguised as a boy was a danger to the youth of Merrimack, New Hampshire.

I didn't write to become a director, which many people do.

I'm a dramatist.

If I can make a living as a writer, I can do anything.

Nowadays, Skype is a generational way of putting both people on camera at the same time.

Connie Heermann is a Freedom Writer teacher. I believe she represents the best of what dedicated teachers can be because she chose to serve her students, not her school board.

The death penalty issue is obviously a divisive one. But whether one is for or against, you can not deny the basic illogic - if we know the system is flawed, if we know there are innocent people on Death Row, then until the system is reformed, should we not abandon the death penalty to protect those who are innocent?

TV is where a writer can write his novel.

I've always shot on film, but the times are changing.

Disney usually doesn't do pitches for original ideas.

As soon as you're finished shooting, you have to go into the edit room and choose all of the shots that you're going to commit to because the visual effects vendor has to get it because they'll spend months on it. So, you're editing out of sequence before you've gotten a film for the movie and the performances.

How do you survive living in a cell knowing you are innocent? Many of those exonerated whom I have met seem to have a more benign, grateful attitude toward life than those of us who walk free. Many find a religious or spiritual stronghold.

I really like Rosamund Pike very much.

I've been a teenager. I even feel like I've been a 16-year-old girl. So I have a lot of voices inside my head!

My dad was a presence, of course, but he worked nights a lot, and I would only see him one day a week.

My true nature, I believe, is writing.

I just really have an affinity for women. Watching them go through journeys is more interesting to me than watching men.

The territory has changed, and a lot of really good actors want to do cable series, but they don't necessarily want to do network TV and make the commitment of 22 episodes or whatever. They find that the liberties and the creative freedoms that you get in cable is more interesting to them than the censorship of a network show.

It's not uncommon to have chaotic writers' rooms.