David E. Kelley's Quotes

You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.

Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan; you just hope for it.

People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.

But I do believe that in all my shows, I really enjoy the quirky, the eccentric characters, the ones you don't meet every day.

But Steven Bochco was smart; he knew that viewers were smart.

For me, I'm happy to succeed on any network.

I don't think I could write a straight drama.

I don't think it's that strange that a show has sort of a bumpy beginning. It's just part and parcel of the process.

I miss Denny Crane.

I never thought of myself as a writer.

I think the law changes, which is a nice luxury.

I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

My court skills may have atrophied.

So I think a writer should write what he loves, the people he relates to.

Some of my high school teachers did remind me that I had an excellent imagination when it came to making up excuses.

The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school.

The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.

We also have issue oriented storylines which are an examination of an issue, be it ethical or social.

When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

You learn more when things go wrong.

I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.