William Devane Quotes

Even though shows like NYPD Blue are soaps in my opinion, but they're individualized to an extent that you can still follow what's going on if you miss a week.

Clint Eastwood is aging beautifully. But someone like Burt Reynolds and others are practically destroying their faces in the amount of work they have.

It worked well because Don Murray didn't want to be on Knots anymore.

A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.

Ultimately the Emmys are a popularity contest.

The West Wing seems to be feeding the myth about how presidential politics are.

Networks don't want a show with a continuing story. There's no backend potential.

The business is built on slowing or even stopping the aging process.

I try to watch only real things, which basically amounts to C-Span for me. I like real people in real situations. I learn from that.

If you watch Cheers, in 12 years they didn't age a day.

I'm an Irish-American, and I grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

What I would have liked to do on that show was play a secretary of state who has huge personal business interests throughout the world. That, to me, seems to be more in synch with reality.

Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.

When you go to a movie, it's about what's not being said. I tried to bring that to Greg Sumner. It was always about what's not being said.

There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes.

Joey, my older brother, had his own TV show in the '50s, along with Cathy Callahan.

I'm trying to find a character that's my age and I can sustain week after week. I'd like to do a series.