Quotes About Stereotypes

One of my favorite stories is, I got fired off 'Bionic Woman' in part because I was told that I don't know how to write women, and they promptly replaced me with a guy. What I find lovely about the story is how unaware the white dude who said that to me was when he said it.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I'm just gonna tell her, 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you, they can't really fire you, and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'

Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?

I know that in writer's rooms across North America, there are still conversations about how much is too much when it comes to intimacy between, in my case, two men. That's an insane conversation to be having.

What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

Because of England's lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.

There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'

Directly after Rock Hudson's death came the fears that gay writers and actors and directors would be denied jobs; who knew if they would live long enough to finish a feature film or television series? And would the unions force directors to give blood tests and ban actors who tested positive?

I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.

ABC's intelligently hilarious sitcom 'Modern Family' depicts a gay-male marriage in which both partners are refreshingly dimensional, believable human beings. The writers dare to make them flawed and thus fully delineated, but they're not flawed in the silly, stereotypical ways that once dominated such portrayals.

It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons; I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.

It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that's what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he's not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

But when I did think about it and looked at the whole package - the producers behind the show, the writers, the cast I would be working with - I would have been a fool to turn it down just because the role for me was another gay role.

Bin Laden is living in the United States, and he has blonde hair. He's probably got some type of eating disorder. And he drinks too much, and then occasionally writes an op-ed under the name Ann Coulter.

In the U.K., we have a paper called 'The Daily Mail,' which is quite misogynist. And every day, it just writes pieces about: 'Women, you're going to die now! Women, here's shoes that give you cancer! Women, just hate yourselves!'

That's my main complaint with Murakami: that he writes these complex males and then really static women.

Tina Fey writes crazy, off-color, racist, hilarious stuff for '30 Rock,' but it's always funny because you're in this almost two-dimensional world where there's Jenna Maroney and these over-the-top characters. That's the framework.

Nobody ever has a problem if a man writes a woman. I wanted to be able to say, 'Well, I can write your men and your action, too. You don't just have to give me the love scenes, which I don't even think are my strong suit.'

Everyone has this idea of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin: the woman being pretty and prancing around while the guy writes all the songs.

Our industry often writes an actress off after she gets married. I gave hits before getting married, after getting married, after having my first child, after having my second child and continue to do so.

If someone writes a stereotyped trans character, it's really harmful on a macro level in solidifying public perception of trans people because we're such a small minority group but it's also detrimental to the life of the actor, who needs the paycheck even if the role is bad.