Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.

Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.

Hill Street Blues gave me an opportunity to work with an ensemble cast of people whose work I admired.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

If bad taste were a felony, every writer I know would've done prison time.

I think the best work flows out of a collaborative environment.

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

It's not about what you accomplish - it's about what you take away from your experiences and how you handle them.

Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters.

I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

People in music lie, but they don't expect you to believe them. People in television actually expect you to believe the lies.

However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less - and probably was much less - than a million.

I tried to play bass in a punk band once, and it was an absolute disaster. I can’t play anything. I don’t know what it is.

If I choose abstraction over reality, it is because I consider it the lesser chaos.

Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.

I'm a collecting maniac and I buy a lot of books and records. I have over thousand cds.

Every top player has his own style, just as every painter has his own personal signature.