Mike White

“I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.”

“I feel like I know how to write plot.”

“You come to a point where you realize your work doesn't save you.”

“I do idiosyncratic dramedies.”

“I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.”

“I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.”

“My impulse is to create an aesthetic that's about a humanistic approach to a world and trying to create compassion for all the characters.”

“You can come to a political position from an emotional place.”

“Yeah, it's disturbing when someone has no self-awareness.”

“To me, this is from a Buddhist perspective or whatever, sometimes people who are working out their political beliefs, they can rage against the man, and yet at the same time can be oblivious to their own way of stepping on the foot of the person right next to them.”

“I think I'm more of an absurdist than a satirist. I think I'm more of a - humanist? I hate to say it!”

“It's always interesting to challenge yourself to say, 'Is this the best you can do?'”

“I grew up in a religious family, and we weren't allowed to listen to rock music.”

“It's fun as a creator to make something that allows multiple interpretations.”

“You watch stuff like 'The Real Housewives' and you start to think, 'We're all so vacuous! Is there any nobility to any of these people?' But then you look out into the world, and there are people who are doing cool stuff with their lives.”

“The purpose of making people feel uncomfortable is to play with their preconceptions.”

“I don't even give my scripts to friends because I just feel it's, like, I don't need one more set of opinions.”

“I'm a weird guy. I'm practically albino. What about me isn't weird?”

“I remember I grew up in Pasadena in a very, kind of, homogeneous, kind of, suburban existence and then I went to college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. And there were all these, kind of, hipster New York kids who were so-called 'cultured' and had so much, you know, like knew all the references and, like, already had their look down.”

“My first job was with 'Dawson's Creek' where everybody looked good and they spoke better than you. It was kind of a wish fulfillment, fantasy-type show.”