When you get to the fourth, fifth and sixth years of a show, it's really good to have held back, so that you have somewhere to go. That also applies to levels of violence, levels of humor, levels of production value.

There is a place for visionaries and the avant-garde in this world, but not at 9 o'clock on a network.

I think when people talk about lighter drama, they tend to use that term, not derogatorily, but 'lighter' means sort of less to a degree, but if you're an actor, light drama is often mistaken for easier drama.

One of the tricks that you have to learn, with episodic TV, is you don't know how many years you're going to be blessed with.

To me, the difference between mythology and real history is that the real history has to tell a kind of believable story of how things happened. The physics has to work.

he beauty of this world [of comics] is there are so many stories to tell, and there's so many wonderful characters. Wonderful characters we haven't even begun to introduce - it's a world that is infinitely expandable.

The great thing about Gotham is it encompasses so many different worlds.

When I've had hard times in my life, the one thing about being in TV is that it's positive. I withdrew to 'Cheers,' it was familiar in that it was family. It had a kind of realistic positiveness to it.

It's like an angel crying on your tongue.

One of the advantages of series TV is that you can change your mind and plan things as you go.

It's easy to leave people wanting more after the first episode, but it's hard to leave people wanting more after the 24th episode. And it's my job, more than anybody else's, to keep that in mind. One season, in TV terms, is nothing. You need to hit it for three or four seasons, and then you're doing well, in TV terms. Then, you've done your job.