Paul Rust

“I wrote on the fourth season of 'Arrested Development.'”

“The first text I ever got was somebody breaking plans on a first date. That was, like, the worst way to be introduced to a new technology is with rejection.”

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

“In your 20s, you're checking your bank account to make sure you're not broke. In your 30s, you're looking at yourself and realizing you're broken.”

“Probably around junior high, I became obsessed with films.”

“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.”

“Writing on 'Love' is so steeped in self-analysis. The writer's room can feel like therapy.”

“I grew up in Iowa, so I would go hunting. I took a hunter's safety course in eighth grade to get extra credit in school.”

“A lot of the time, a comedy script is just dialogue, and that's the main thing you have to worry about.”

“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.”

“I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.”

“The Magic Castle is not a place that people know nationally, but as soon as you move to L.A., you hear people talk about it.”

“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.”

“Certainly on a date, I've been over-focused on, 'Is this person comfortable or not?' and then deciding for them that they are not comfortable and I will help them, which is death for a first date.”

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

“I think it's sort of rare in TV shows or movies to see people being vulnerable. That's sort of scary to an audience.”

“In high school, I was crazy in love, and I would make handmade construction paper valentines every month for our monthly anniversaries. Then I'd go early in the morning and tape one to her car. It sounds sweet, but let's be honest: it was a little weird. I was probably crossing some lines.”

“Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic - those are sort of three layers of repression.”

“Being sincere and true to yourself is a scary thing but, ultimately, a rewarding one.”