The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled.

If you're going to vote on a television contract, there is a certain rationality to saying that the same structures that are applied to Health Plan participation should be placed on the right to vote on a strike.

It's show business. No show, no business.

I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work.

And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.

I think most people don't react well to being screamed at. It's counterproductive.

There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.

I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.

You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, 'I'm on strike' than 'I'm unemployed.' And those are the people who vote for strikes.

People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.

I hardly see myself as a futurist.

The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.

I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.

The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.

If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.'

TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.

The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.

I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.

Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'

People do have viewing patterns, and you disrupt those at your own peril. That's something that everybody learned after 1988. The numbers have gone down every year since that strike. Big time.

The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.

I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.

When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

There's nothing worse than talking about yourself to find out that you're not that interesting.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.