Dick Wolf Quotes

It's show business. No show, no business.

I think most people don't react well to being screamed at. It's counterproductive.

I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.

Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.

The environment doesn't change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.

The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

People do have viewing patterns, and you disrupt those at your own peril. That's something that everybody learned after 1988. The numbers have gone down every year since that strike. Big time.

The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.

The threat to free television. The reason television is free is because it is a life support system for commercials. That fundamental aspect is about to change.

I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.

The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.

There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.

I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work.

I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the history of show business.

If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.

I hardly see myself as a futurist.

I don't think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.

I've known John Landgraf for 20 years. He said it perfectly. People will ask if I've seen X. My response has often been, 'Seen it? I've never heard of it.'