Quotes from Jason Katims

My first job in television was on 'My So-Called Life.'

You're breaking up, you're getting together, you're changing your life, you're arguing with your parents, you're making terrible mistakes, you're having great triumphs. It's what happens to teenagers.

Honestly, I don't know enough about what's a good timeslot and what isn't. Either you have a timeslot where nobody is really tuning in, which isn't good, or you're in a good hour, and then you've got a lot of competition.

If nobody has really done a show about people in their twenties that has been successful, why?

The frustrating thing about 'Friday Night Lights' is I know a lot more people would respond to the show if they saw it.

As much as I thought the end of 'Friday Night Lights' was a really great ending, I was one of those people who wanted to make it into a movie. Even though it ultimately didn't work to do that movie, I did work with some of the other writers and by myself writing a script for that.

I came to NBC on 'Friday Night Lights' and they have supported that show and found ways - unprecedented ways - to keep it on the air for a long time. And when I came to them with the idea of doing 'Parenthood,' they not only supported me in doing it but also got behind it in such a way that we were able to put together this incredible cast.

I sort of was inspired by 'Friday Night Lights,' where it was a very different show, but similar in that they were both large ensemble dramas where you had many stories going on at once. I wanted to do a show that shared that element, and that's really why I wanted to develop 'Parenthood' as a series.

A lot of times as writers, you want to come up with the best possible story, and you bend it according to what you want to happen. I think one of the things that I always try to think about is what would really happen in a situation, what feels real.

One of the things you realize when you have a health crisis in your immediate family is that life does not stop so that you can go through that experience.

I'm not somebody who goes online after every episode airs because that would be, for me, getting too much feedback and too much information.

What's great is that I keep hearing from people who are discovering 'Friday Night Lights' because of streaming and Netflix and Hulu and all of these things. Somehow... things don't get old as fast as they used to. They stay vibrant.