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While television is a good servant, it's a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives without much happiness bang for the buck.

I actually think we should be trying to be rigorous in our thinking about television and the way it enters our lives and shapes the way so many people think.

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.

I ended up with my life slanted toward television, and I just accept that. I think you play the hand the way it's dealt, that's all.

Television is a visual medium. You have to create some kind of visual interest. And it's entertainment for your eyes.

Television is a very writer-driven business, and it's one of the few parts of entertainment where writers are treated with respect, only because they need you. If they didn't have to treat you with respect, they would be happy to dismiss you.

I have a deep respect for the fundamentals of television, the traditions of it, even, but I don't have any reverence for it.

Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a different business.

Television has to reflect back to you your own sense of security. It also has to mirror your sense of your own decency and your own limitations.

What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is 'all it does' - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.