We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

I really hate sitcoms on television with canned laughter and stuff. What really makes me laugh is the real-life stuff. I've got a dry sense of humor.

Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and stimulated the hope of instant results.

I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.

I can only speak for myself and hope people hear my words and see me on television speaking for myself. And hopefully they'll be able to make their own judgment. And at the end of the day I just want my work to speak for itself.

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat sleep read watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.

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

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

If I were beginning my career today I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television and I think if I were beginning today I'd be there.

Thanks to television for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.

The place I feel most at home is when I have health insurance. I really don't care how I get it whether it's on film or television or waiting tables you know?

If you're going to vote on a television contract there is a certain rationality to saying that the same structures that are applied to Health Plan participation should be placed on the right to vote on a strike.

With any child entering adolescence one hunts for signs of health is desperate for the smallest indication that the child's problems will never be important enough for a television movie.

I was as happy doing theater in New York for little or no money as I am now doing television for more money. The happiness I guess comes out of it being a good job. The success has to do with the fact that it's a good job that will continue.

When I was a little kid all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936 and it was a monopoly and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on I go to the library and read a good book.

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.

The nightmare is you spend the rest of your life being funny at parties and then people say 'Why didn't you do that when you were on television?'

Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth inventor of television we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television I always did what I wanted to do and if I couldn't I didn't do it. It was a freedom that these days young directors starting out don't have.

I did skit comedy online for many years beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing which was the comedy.