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 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.

Imagery is like music.

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

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

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.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.