Our house was like a hotel. It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans; she'll bail you out.'
It feels blessed to me. Because I go to comic cons, and people come up and they say, 'You're the reason I ride a motorcycle. You're the reason I became a mechanic.' And there are people who love 'Scream' and 'The Waterboy,' 'Royal Pains,' 'Parks & Rec,' 'Arrested Development.' And now 'Barry.' And then there are kids who only know me as an author.
We had, like, the greatest time you could ever imagine doing 'Arrested Development.' And as grateful as we are for the careers we have afterwards, it was - we still miss it.
I've been in, like, kids' clubs... I've been in the Boom Boom Room in New York, and the kids are going, 'Oh my God, you produced 'Arrested Development?'' They aren't talking about 'A Beautiful Mind' or '24.' It's like the only thing in my whole career was 'Arrested Development,' literally.
When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.
When you live the life of a comedian, it's such a state of arrested development. I can't deal with anything very maturely. I'm still really bad at paying bills or doing anything that would be considered semi-adult. I'm really bad at it. It's weird I can create and run a TV show, but I can't pay my phone bill.
You step over the threshold of your parents' home, and you're instantly transported back to your childhood. It's like time travel. You revert at once to a place of arrested development.
You look at 'Arrested Development' or 'Community,' we're constantly either deconstructing genre or tone. We like to say it's like being a mad scientist: you get to play in a laboratory and experiment with directions to take narrative in.
One thing I learned working at magazines was that if you couldn't get people to look at a page or a cover, then you were fired. It was all about how you create arresting works, and by arresting I mean stop people, even for a nano-second.
I think that when you've got a world in which it's plausible to have a guy dressed as a giant bat and fight evil clowns and other nightmarish freaks, I think the world has to be visually a little more arresting than a regular world.
Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
I've always been interested in arrival, and coming to a space, and even to looking back at where you were.
If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.
But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.
When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.
If you're waiting for the perfect moment, you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.
What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.
To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.
