Nell Scovell Quotes

Sensitivity training is a fine idea but isn’t taken seriously by those who need it most.

Trump Tower is no ordinary property: It is the jewel in Donald Trump’s brass crown.

I’ve worked on over twenty TV staffs, and nine out of ten male colleagues are wonderful, inclusive, and professional. Still, there’s usually one guy – the Tenth Man – who turns a fun job into a dental appointment.

Writing for TV made way more sense than writing for magazines. And by sense, I mean money.

Broad City’s first season is full of moments that are insane… and yet make total sense.

Even when powerful men stumble, they inspire fear.

Together, we must all remember that one of the most effective responses to hate speech is more speech.

Studies do show that in hierarchical structures, you do get more harassment. There’s more power concentrated at the top, which means there’s more abuse of power concentrated at the top. And every TV show is very much a hierarchy.

I think empathy is undervalued in a lot of these comedy writers’ rooms.

I fantasize about the networks making a rule that each show’s writing staff needs to reflect the gender and racial makeup of its audience.

Moms Mabley blazed a path for female stand-ups in a housecoat and floppy hat. Phyllis Diller worked equally hard to make herself unattractive to men and non-threatening to women.

I’d like to see David Letterman adopt the inclusion rider on his Netflix show.

Everyone – male and female – is biased. But no one wants to admit it, so our brains search for examples that disprove the accusation.

The creative process is often wrapped up in bottomless anxiety, and when the world applauds the product of that process, it soothes the anxiety. Briefly. Then the anxiety returns and even intensifies.

When blue-eyed Donald Trump married hazel-eyed Ivana Zelnickova, he probably figured his broad-shouldered DNA would dominate her girly alleles. But genetics played a cruel trick on Trump: Of the couple’s three children, only the youngest, Eric, wound up with his father’s fishy blue eyes.

Male writers don’t want to be judged in the room. They want to be able to scarf an entire bag of potato chips while cracking fart jokes and making lewd comments without fear of feminine disapproval. But we’re your co-workers, not your wives.

Once, after a long week, I felt so insecure that I decided to make a list of people who thought I was funny even if I didn’t think I was. At the top of the list, I wrote, ‘Garry Shandling.’ His early praise protected me like a comedy-writer version of Harry Potter’s scar.

One of the most rebellious things a woman can do is allow people to think she’s mean.

The Pulitzer Prize was established when Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911, leaving a bequest to create the eponymous award. An immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer struck it rich by combining the ‘St. Louis Post’ and the ‘St. Louis Dispatch’ to make the – wait for it – ‘St. Louis Post-Dispatch.’

Albert Brooks. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Larry David. The best comedic actors play broad and real simultaneously, coming across as both larger than life and all too human.

Writing is not what you start. It’s not even what you finish. It’s what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see.

In over thirty years working in TV and movies, I’ve never had an exit interview or contributed to a 360 assessment.

The vocabulary of my cynical world doesn’t allow me to explain the success of ‘Lean In.’

In her darkest hours, Diana, Princess of Wales, could have used a friend like Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The two lived similar lives, a century apart.

I’ve been speaking out about harassment and gender disparity for years.

Like leggings, comedies created by women came into vogue in the late 1980s, exploded in the early ’90s, went mainstream in the mid-’90s, and were shoved into the back of the closet around 1997.

I was the second female writer ever hired at ‘Late Night.’ When I applied for the job in 1988, I had no way of knowing how much the odds were stacked against me.

Howard Dean is no longer the brilliant mastermind of the Fifty State Strategy that enabled the Democrats to storm the White House and Congress. He’s the idiot wearing an ugly sweatshirt.

In March 2010, I attended an art opening for Kimberly Brooks’s show ‘The Stylist Project’ in Los Angeles. It was a starry celebration hosted by Dior and ‘Vanity Fair’ to benefit P.S. Arts. But even as fun-to-gape-at actresses like Christina Hendricks arrived, I couldn’t take my eyes off the oil portraits.

Feminists cried, ‘Sexism!’ when New York Senator Hillary Clinton was judged not by the content of her character but by the color of her pantsuits.

The Kennedy Center Honors reflects our humanity and higher purpose. We are a great nation, in part, because we value culture.

You want a diverse writers’ room, not because it’s the fair thing to do or the right thing to do, but because it’s the best thing to do for your show. I’ve seen that to be true.

Making someone laugh is the simplest, most basic positive human connection.

The average career span for a TV writer is 11 years. The only other thing I could find that had the same career span was a police dog.

An ocean of ink – real and virtual – has been spilled critiquing the appearance of female politicians.

For thirty years, I’ve been hearing that it’s getting better for women. And until I see statistical proof over enough years that that’s true, I won’t believe it.

The desire to keep doing what we love supersedes the desire to penalize bad behavior.

I’m both an insider and an outsider.

Hollywood is built on relationships, and the way you keep relationships is by playing nice.

Given the long history of global anti-Semitism and continued calls for the destruction of Israel, it’s tough to be a Jew.

Jenny McCarthy has used her celebrity and sex appeal to attract attention to autism. And while no one questions McCarthy’s determination and passion, many scientists have debunked her anti-vaccine message and her claims that a gluten-free diet can provide a cure.

Arts are a luxury, proof that a civilization has risen above ‘politics and war.’

Garry Shandling’s stand-up specials were masterpieces of tightly crafted stories that delivered both hard jokes and hard truths. He was neurotic and self-deprecating, and his observations on life cut deep.

We have so many great memoirs from women in front of the camera, from Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, and Amy Schumer.

One of the great things about being in entertainment is you have access to the media. People pay attention to you.

I learned not to get too happy about good news or too distraught about bad.

Moral licensing comes into play when people rely on past behavior to dismiss current prejudiced behavior. This is better known as the ‘Some of my best friends are…’ defense.