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 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.

Every cinematographer I worked with had his own way of solving problems.

I have problems with machines which aren't gestural.

Women don't like advice. They don't want you to fix their problems, they just want you to listen.

Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

From dear, dear Gloria Swanson, I learned how to live long, happy and free of health problems. I owe her my life.

I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean.

I don't see this planet being... they're talking about how they're turning around the environmental problems here, but I think it's already too late.

People with fertility problems are not alone. It is a very very common problem for couples today. I've seen statistics that are just staggering.

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.

That's one of our biggest problems, it's always somebody else's fault instead of our own fault.

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

The decisions and problems of Uruguay will be resolved by Uruguayans.

Coppola has problems getting financing, so why should I not have problems getting financing.

When you take a look at the problems our country is facing, debt is No. 1. The math is downright scary and the credit markets aren't going to keep on giving us cheap rates.

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

There is no miracle cure for the many problems of the world.

I used to think that it didn't make any difference how far you ran if you had a good, strong musculoskeletal system and no underlying cardiovascular problems.

With respect to the FBI, they had problems communicating in a vertical way, within the FBI itself, so that information of importance could get pushed up to those who were decision-makers.

It is time for everyone to sit down - the NCAA, the NBA, the players union and the coaching fraternity - and come up with suitable solutions to these problems.

We are really the victims of our own problems.

It has become much more difficult to smuggle dangerous substances across our borders over the past three years, and this is creating real problems for drug traffickers.

I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.

I have never had problems sleeping the night before a race.

Most Americans approach the problems of the Middle East with a pro-Israeli bias - and rightly so.

The Middle East is literally going up in flames, as is California, and Katrina's problems haven't been solved, and Congress' response is to criticize Federal judges.