Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That's what I look for.

One of the biggest challenges in the past for me in working on the networks was that audiences have grown accustomed to television being something that keeps you company-background music, something that you have on while you're flipping through a magazine, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, putting the kids to bed.

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren't that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

If I get an idea for a series that I really like, I'm sure I won't be able to resist coming back and doing it.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

It's certainly easy for me to make a fictional character mad about something. I can get them angry about something that I'm relatively indifferent about, just because I'm not educated on it, if I go to someone who is educated about it and is passionate about it. I find a point of fiction and then give it to them.

My preference would have been to not go back on the air after 9\11, at all until the time felt right but that wasn't an option.