I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.

When I was 13 years old, I was in a car accident with my sister, who was driving the car. It was her 22nd birthday, and she died. She died in front of me. She died all over me. Death stuck its big old ugly face in my face and my life changed. That's why death seems to be a theme that appears in all my stuff.

I think there's a lot of interesting stuff on TV. I feel much more optimistic about TV than I do about movies. There will always be good movies but I think, for the most part, it's always going to be a huge fight to get those movies made. TV is the best place to be as a writer, I think. TV is really, in terms of if you have a series, it's really a writer's medium.

We can make movies like There's Something About Mary (1998), using semen as hair gel, and it's a huge hit - but to show a bloody tampon is considered shocking. I think that says a lot about our culture's attitude towards women and towards female sexuality.

I want to write a play - my playwriting career was just beginning to take off when I got the offer to come to Hollywood and write for TV. I'm also sitting on a couple of screenplays I've written which I would like to direct when Six Feet Under comes to an end. I'm also looking to start a family with my partner, get better at meditating, read all the great books I haven't yet read, and hopefully write a novel myself before I die.

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.

On his early TV career: "The shows I were on were all about serving the star's egos. I had this free-floating rage... It's factory work. I had no emotional connection with what I was writing."