Explore Quotes by David E. Kelley

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

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

I miss Denny Crane.

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

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.

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

One of the most fundamental questions people have about defense attorneys is, 'How can you do that? How can you go to bat everyday for a person that you may not know is guilty but you have a pretty good idea that he's not so innocent?' It's a question that defense attorneys answer for themselves by not addressing.

My court skills may have atrophied.

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

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.

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.

If you interview people or friends who work with me, they would say I'm private or internal or don't emote a lot. Yet I do it every day for 10 million people. I just don't do it for the 30 people I'm in the room with.

It gets harder and harder to succeed and find audiences with the 500-channel universe, the remote control, and people being so trigger happy with that remote control. It just gets harder to get a foothold.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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