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

I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.

So I think a writer should write what he loves, the people he relates to.

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.

I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

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

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.