Quotes from Mitchell Hurwitz

When I was on 'The Golden Girls,' we'd have eight scenes per show. And when 'Seinfeld' came along, they went to, like, 30 scenes a show, which was revolutionary. 'Arrested Development' has probably got 60 scenes per show. It just keeps emerging as this more and more complex thing. I always try to keep it very simple at its heart.

Something about not waiting for the laugh of a laugh track allows you to take lines that otherwise might be seen as just direct jokes, and make them seem realistic.

When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.

With 'Arrested Development,' we tried showing the deep disdain that connects a family. We wanted to hold up a mirror to American society. And, just as predicted, America looked away.

Shows don't reunite because television doesn't work that way. There's no profit model and people go off to do other work.

It's like, if I had the luxury of choice, and didn't have to worry about making a living, I would definitely want to get into whatever field it was that allowed me to push further and further comedically. Because that's the joy of it.

There's a lot that you can do in television that you can't do with a film, theoretically. At the time, the only possibility was to do a movie.

The TV industry works in this crazy system where everybody's trying to get the same actors at the same time.

For the most part you are dealing with jealousy, you are dealing with love, you're dealing with hatred, you are dealing with revenge and all of these sort of classic things.

Television is a very writer-driven business, and it's one of the few parts of entertainment where writers are treated with respect, only because they need you. If they didn't have to treat you with respect, they would be happy to dismiss you.

Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down."

I remember being asked when I was in high school what do I want to do when I grow up and the answer is so indicative - I would like to have been a successful playwright.

I think everybody wants to be loved, all the time, but it's not realistic. It's also not realistic, if you're going to be ambitious, in terms of changing the form or evolving.

There's real peril in trying to repeat yourself, and apply rules that applied to something else to a new project.

What's realistic to me is that families love each other and stand by each other. What's unrealistic is that they would ever say that.

You know, 'The Golden Girls' was a very unusual show to start on. I was young, and it was a show about old people, and it was a very traditional show, but it was also an amazing training ground for a joke-writer. It forced me to learn those skills.

Television is so much about continuing to work with people.

Chance favors the well prepared. The more stuff you throw in, the more chances you have of looking like, 'I did that.'

You know, 'The Golden Girls' was a very unusual show to start on. I was young, and it was a show about old people, and it was a very traditional show, but it was also an amazing training ground for a joke-writer. It forced me to learn those skills.