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TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know; they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.

As a writer, you're really in control of almost everything. That's not the case in TV. You have to be prepared to work with a lot of people to make something happen, and you got to be prepared, at least in the beginning, to not be too good at your specific task.

A good TV writer needs all the same tricks a good novelist has.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.

Being an actor, we're so dependent on the writers.

With film, you read the whole script three or four times, and you really have a solid blueprint of who your character is. Whereas in television, that blueprint is constantly changing and adapting, and sometimes you have to take a risk.

There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.