The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time is really the stuff that interests me.

Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

Hill Street Blues gave me an opportunity to work with an ensemble cast of people whose work I admired.

Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.

The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.