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.

You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.

The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.

My court skills may have atrophied.

In retrospect, I think it's a plus, because now we've been able to go back and spend extra time on each of those episodes and make them better.

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

The ideal time for writing a [television] script is four days, though sometimes it has to be two or three days depending on the deadline. If it's two days, sometimes there are things I see that don't work as well. If I have two weeks, the scripts get kind of flabby and lack the adrenaline that a sense of deadline fills you with.