Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan; you just hope for it.

We also have issue oriented storylines which are an examination of an issue, be it ethical or social.

Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan; you just hope for it.

The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school.

But I do believe that in all my shows, I really enjoy the quirky, the eccentric characters, the ones you don't meet every day.

But Steven Bochco was smart; he knew that viewers were smart.

For me, I'm happy to succeed on any network.

I don't think I could write a straight drama.

I don't think it's that strange that a show has sort of a bumpy beginning. It's just part and parcel of the process.

I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.

I miss Denny Crane.

I never thought of myself as a writer.

I think the law changes, which is a nice luxury.

I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

If you interview people or friends who work with me, they would say I'm private or internal or don't emote a lot. Yet I do it every day for 10 million people. I just don't do it for the 30 people I'm in the room with.

It gets harder and harder to succeed and find audiences with the 500-channel universe, the remote control, and people being so trigger happy with that remote control. It just gets harder to get a foothold.

My court skills may have atrophied.

One of the most fundamental questions people have about defense attorneys is, 'How can you do that? How can you go to bat everyday for a person that you may not know is guilty but you have a pretty good idea that he's not so innocent?' It's a question that defense attorneys answer for themselves by not addressing.

People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.

So I think a writer should write what he loves, the people he relates to.

Some of my high school teachers did remind me that I had an excellent imagination when it came to making up excuses.

The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.

When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

You learn more when things go wrong.

You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

The tender heart, the broken and contrite spirit, are to me far above all the joys that I could ever hope for in this vale of tears.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

I don't sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I'm going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.

When I talk to people in need, they tell me they want to hope; they are eager for opportunity; they are ready for better days. And I can tell you that every time their hopes are disappointed, all nations lose.

I'd hope to reach any kid who feels apart from the group - those who seem to be outsiders, who feel different. Kids who want to reach their parents often don't know how to do so.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.

It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.

Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, there to feed and caress him, in like manner our loving God shows His fondness for His beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.

Testimony is an integral part of the Black religious tradition. It is the occasion where the believer stands before the community of faith in order to give account of the hope that is in him or her.

What can you say about such a man as Christopher Reeve? He embodied all the best that a human being can hope to be.

Hope springs eternal, even in politics.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

We are laying the foundations of a government, which we hope may outlast the Pyramids.