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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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