There will always be economic pressure to make hits, identify hits, and then exploit hits. And you're going to exploit them with as many episodes as you probably can.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

Everyone in Hollywood who is successful becomes less successful at some point. I'm just trying to delay that fall for as long as I can.

Obviously there are different standards and practices that are allowed on cable versus network. You just have to embrace what your network is going to allow.

Nothing makes me happier than to have a smart person tell me why the show is smart, especially if I didn't intend that. I tend to be a very instinctual writer, and I don't plot shows out like, "This is my thesis and this is how I'm going to subtly sneak my thesis into this episode." I just approach it from, "We know these characters well, here are the situations that they're in, now how would they behave? What would the consequences be?" And it's always fun to see how people interpret that and dissect it afterward, and make me and the other writers seem probably smarter than we really are.

I'm perfectly happy to color within the network lines when I have to.

The worst thing you can do is end up with a network show on cable or end up with a cable show on network.