Quotes from Nahnatchka Khan

There's some actors that go easily between drama and comedy because they play the naturalism of the role, and they just have natural timing.

I really related to that experience of being what we call the 'bridge generation' and always trying to navigate your more traditional growing-up experiences with wanting the latest Air Jordans or whatever it is: Trying to explain to your parents why, and they just, like, don't get it.

'Modern Family' is unique in that it's telling the story of three different families, which is a huge amount of characters to service.

If you take a step back, you realize that the TV landscape really has been... There have been some amazing shows in terms of representation, but not for Asian people.

'Seinfeld' was an amazing show. It's iconic and defined a whole generation of comedy writers - but by their own admission, that show was about nothing.

Cable shows do 13 episodes. I get that. I can wrap my head around 13 episodes. You make them all, you post them all, and then you get to air them. The network cycle is way more intense. There's more episodes.

Not to say that I saw myself in the Iron Sheik, but our whole family would gather around the TV on Saturday and watch the Iron Sheik wrestle. And he was the bad guy, so everyone else was booing him and cheering whoever he was fighting - it was the opposite in our house.

When we were growing up, the only person we saw on TV that vaguely resembled us was the Iron Sheik - the pro wrestler whose signature move was the 'Camel Clutch.'

The first time I ever wrote anything, it was an editorial column for my high school newspaper.

The family sitcom has been around forever, since the advent of television. I don't need to reinvent it. But if you take something and you do it in a way that you haven't necessarily seen before, that's right where I live.

'Fresh Off the Boat' will be syndicated. This show and these characters will live forever in the pantheon of classic family sitcoms.

Writing in another person's voice is a skill you have to develop when you're working on someone else's show. But if you can maintain your perspective, that's what will make you stand out.

I'm not Chinese, but both of my parents were born in Iran; my brother and I were the first ones born here. First in our family to go to college, that whole thing.

This is going to sound weird, but when I was a little kid, the Iron Sheik was really big in our house.

You don't have to be just one thing. I think that applies to women in front of and behind the camera.

Working in network sitcom arenas, whenever you decide to depart from the norm and tell a story that's not typical, I think you're always a little bit nervous.

If you try to describe NASCAR to anyone, you sound crazy.

In the writers' room, the challenge is always to tell interesting stories in unexpected ways, so we try to never limit ourselves in how we accomplish that.

With 'Always Be My Maybe,' this has to be funny; this has to be entertaining. And then, when we stop for these moments with the characters that are emotional, you kind of feel it more because it's a little bit unexpected.

Stuff starts to feel stale comedically when you're just rehashing things, so putting together a writers' room where the majority is made up of people who have not been the focus of the story, it flips everything around.

Norman Lear was talking about everything in the '70s... race, sexism, all of it. The network comedy really stayed away from that in the 1980s and 1990s.

When you take stock, there are so many more choices and points of view that are necessary.

I went to USC and got my first break writing for a kids' show called 'Pepper Ann.'

It's something that's almost taken for granted in sitcoms about white families. Like, 'Oh, we're going on a summer vacation!' As if that's something that everybody does.