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

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.

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

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

Imagery is like music.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

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

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

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.

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.

I suppose any note, no matter how sour, sounds like a song if you hold onto it long enough.

Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.

I quite agree with you. The sun is not kind. God should use a rose amber spot.

What does one tell a husband? One tells him nothing.