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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

'Hill Street,' because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.

Cop shows are by definition melodramatic; they're larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They're provocative, assuming they grapple with - to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture.

I remember practically every joke I've ever heard in my life.

I tend not to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. If you say, 'Oh, I did 'Hill Street Blues' or 'L.A. Law' and everything I do has to measure up to some preconceived notion of that,' it would paralyze you.

I'd always thought that 'NYPD Blue' really would open those doors. While I think it created a much broader template for cable, I don't think it really did that much for network television.

Privately, we always called 'Hill Street' 'Cop Soap.'

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

The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.

The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time, is really the stuff that interests me.

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.

When you look at Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat and all these twentysomething billionaires, it's really kind of fascinating; a classic tale of the haves and have-nots.

What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person's life that is so hyper-acute, and not just because they're medically ill. It's also a moment of hope and expectation and concern.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics.

Original 'Dallas' fans, please come back, because it's the same show 20 years later - same drama.

What we should care about is health - reduction of morbidity and mortality. Too often, we instead pay attention to whether something is 'normal.' A hospital may spend several million dollars separating a pair of conjoined twins, even though that separation is likely to leave them worse off.

My dad's one of my biggest heroes. I also think Paul Newman's an inspiration. I know a lot of people say that, but I love that he's a great role model and a humanitarian. I admire people who don't necessarily want to change the world, but try to make it a better environment.

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

Aviation will give new nourishment to the religious sprit of mankind. It will add airspace to those other great heighteners of the cosmic mood: the wood, the sea, the desert.

The best advice I can give you about falling is to never land.

Resume? I wish I had a resume. And if I did, I wouldn't scrub anything from it. Who cares?

Just getting a degree is not enough, and you need to sell your ideas.

If I could be good at any sport, it'd be javelin. I know a few people I would love to throw a spear at.

Going through something difficult in your life, music, for me, is always a friend and something that helps you to figure things out.

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

Without a doubt, my richest relationships are my long-term friendships with musical partners, because we make music together. That's what we love to do with our lives.

The Greens have every right to run, that's what democracy is, and they should argue their point by saying how they think people should vote, not by telling us to be silent.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

I had such extraordinary breaks from the moment I entered the theater.

You can talk to a fade but a hook won't listen.

I don't think what I have to say is that important.

Pray in faith.

To the guests that must go bid Gods speed and brush away all traces of their steps.