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I find that on serialized television it's wiser to hit the ground and look forward, and take the cues from the writers and the events happening, otherwise you just tie yourself in knots.

If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.

The nature of fiction is to make one distrustful of any character who lectures and castigates.

With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.

The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up.

Writing a memoir is such a private, personal experience that it's intimidating to think of adapting it for television.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head.

The stage gives you more control over your own work; in television, there's a distressing amount of communal writing. Unless it's your show, you have no control over that. You're at the mercy of whoever's running the show.

When public figures write memoirs, there is always some indecision regarding how much they want to write of things as they were and how much they want to cut corners to avoid riling up others. I decided to write my memoirs exactly as they were, and I will not digress - not when things are ill at ease and not when they are comfortable.