Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.

You can make a good show, but you still need some magical alchemy to get people to watch.

When you start a TV show, you're not necessarily thinking, "Are we setting up what we need for season seven?" You're just trying to stay on the air, and you try to learn your job as you go, and do what you can.

I think the bar is higher these days in terms of audience expectations of authenticity.

I'm very humble in terms of knowing that television is an extraordinary collaborative medium and that one person alone cannot make a great TV show.

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

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.