Steven Bochco Quotes & Sayings

“The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.”

“'Hill Street,' because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.”

“Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.”

“Imagery is like music.”

“I think the best work flows out of a collaborative environment.”

“You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.”

“The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time, is really the stuff that interests me.”

“Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.”

“I tend not to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. If you say, 'Oh, I did 'Hill Street Blues' or 'L.A. Law' and everything I do has to measure up to some preconceived notion of that,' it would paralyze you.”

“Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.”