Kenya Barris Quotes

Norman Lear is my all-time, ultimate hero. He's an amazing man. That's one person I'm looking forward to meeting. What he did, with shows and sitcoms, he's my hero.

Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he's just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let's not forget that he's one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.

I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.

Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

I like Spike Lee a lot. He's incredibly gifted and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.

I wanted to do screenwriting. That's what I went to school for, but my major was overfilled, and when I got 'The Daily Show', I was a semester away from officially starting my major, so I never started that in particular.

I look at a show like 'Roseanne.' That's super influential on me. It's very funny, very real, with real problems. That was a big influence, and I don't know if you see that all the time in the network world.

I think I'm influenced a lot by Drake in specific ways in my writing.

I've paid attention to guys growin' up like Richard Pryor or Paul Mooney. The message that they were sending with what they did was so much bigger than them.

By June 1990, I'd racked up 'written by' credits on both 'Newhart' and 'The Simpsons.'

I'm directing the Sky show. I'm not going to be in it. I'm just writing and directing it. So that'll satisfy that part of my brain.

I'm a different writer now. You don't sit in a room with Sopranos creator David Chase and writer Terence Winter for four years and not learn something. And just watching the way the show was done, and watching the way that David encouraged the imagination.

Jimmy McGovern - I love his writing, and I'm a big fan of him and Alan Clarke.

I would like to write a movie and, if it wasn't too crazy, also direct.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen in this animated, one-dimensional world. I feel like I've been in school this whole time.

I'm not a Larry David. I don't have a 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and a 'Seinfeld' in me.

I will very happily grow old in the comedic world of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, if they would keep having me over and over.

That's what interests me about film: directing.

My take on 'Lucifer' was pretty much laid down by Tom Kapinos when he wrote the original pilot script for it. I remember reading it for the first time, and I was about four or five pages in, thinking this is so funny, and I know how I would want to do this if I was going to do it.

The kind of scripts I have read for web shows have been outstanding.

The cool thing about 'Transparent' is that the show is funny but not like a sitcom is funny. It all comes down to the writing... The writers on that show are so good that you don't have to worry about anything. There are so many things that can go wrong making a TV show or a movie, but if the writing's good, that's, like, 95 percent of it.

I'm pursuing film and TV, and it's exciting because I feel I can write in almost any genre now.

I always wanted to write and direct films for as long as I can remember.