Television Series Quotes & Sayings

What I know of Steve Trevor is everything that I learned from 'Wonder Woman,' the television series with Lynda Carter. And I don't remember much. I do remember his uniform, though. — Nathan Fillion

I was just excited by the whole prospect of working in a television series in Hollywood. I had never anticipated that as an actor I would ever end up here. It may be some sort of fantasy I'd thought about from time to time, but it was completely unrealistic. — Patrick Stewart

My criteria for doing a television series never changed. I wanted more stability, I wanted more of a sense of family, I wanted to do light comedy. — Kathryn Bigelow

I had no expectation of the level of adulation that would come my way. I just wanted to make a living with a regular role in a television series. — Harrison Ford

I'd really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy. — Jeanne Tripplehorn

We get a successful television series or something, and next season they give you less time and less money, which is something I've never really understood. That doesn't happen with Game of Thrones. — Charles Dance

I've had a long line of failed television programs, pilots that were never picked up, series that didn't go very long. I've learned that there's really nothing you can do. If it's not in my control, I try not to worry about it. — Nathan Fillion

Babylon 5 is probably the biggest, most ambitious television science fiction series ever made. It's one big novel told over five years with 110 different stories told within it. — Bill Mumy

With less and less television being watched live, consumers are enjoying the freedom to record at home or in the cloud, watch locally or on the go, and binge watch entire series that they never had the time to enjoy. — Jay Samit

I was my class playwright and I wrote plays set in villages with kings and chiefs.My plays were about treason and betrayals. If they were influenced by Macbeth, they were also influenced by Nigerian plays I had seen and Village Headmaster, a television drama series I had watched as a child. — Sefi Atta

By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of an NHL playoff series. — Steve Rushin

'Doctor Who' is the most original science-fiction television series ever made. It is also one of the longest-running television shows of all time. — Jill Lepore

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television. — Terry Teachout

I've been working some really long hours for the last five or six years. Anybody who works on series television knows, and especially women because women spend probably two hours more than the guys with all their hair and makeup crap. — Victoria Pratt

I love series television because it's so much fun to have that much opportunity to paint the character. — Annie Potts

On a smash TV series, you make much more money than you ever can in a movie. Do you know how much more Bill Cosby will make than Spielberg? The money for successful television is unbelievable. — Lee Rich

I'd love to star in a television series of my own. I love the idea of living with a character for a number of years, watching him grow. — Michael Dorn

You can be in Ohio and shoot your own web series, if you want. If this had been around when I was in high school, I can guarantee you that my friends and I would have been shooting our own television shows and putting them online and trying to get as many hits as possible. — Busy Philipps

I did a little theatre work after that and the following year I got another part in a television series. Then it was almost to the end of the year before I got more work. That was coming to terms with the reality of the vocation I had chosen. — Karl Urban

After I did nine years of a television series, I didn't want to do anything really that involved going to a set and being in front of a camera for quite a while. And when I did start to want to do things, I wanted to focus more on film. — Gillian Anderson

The words 'California's Gold' will no longer mean anything about me or about a television series. They will mean what California's Gold has always truly meant: not the literal gold nuggets that they pulled out of the earth, not the riches people got when they came here, but the dreams that brought people here and are still bringing people here. — Huell Howser

I am a firm believer in The Paleo Solution. I maintain a hectic schedule that starts early and finishes late. Filming a television series, maintaining my fitness, and being a mom can be harrowing some days. Since adopting a Paleo way of eating I look and feel better, and I know that I am setting a good example for my daughter. — Eva LaRue

The downside to series television is that the schedule is ferocious. It constantly feels like you have a midterm due that you haven't started yet. — Aaron Sorkin

Mom opened her mouth to say something, then closed it, hesitating. After a few more silent seconds, she said, "Just so you're prepared, dear - " I cringed. Whatever was coming didn't sound good. " - I want you to know that you're going to be scheduled for a series of tests with a new doctor in New York at the beginning of December." I groaned. "He's someone Uncle Eric heard about on a television program." "We're going to a doctor because Uncle Eric saw him on TV?" I exclaimed. "Honey, supposedly he's working miracles with diabetes. After Uncle Eric saw him, I found two articles about him in medical journals, and then Profiles magazine did a long interview with him. It was very impressive. He's getting a lot of attention right now." "Did Dr. Werner say we should go see him?" "No." "Dr. Frank?" "No." "Have you even discussed this with them?" "No. — Ann M. Martin

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist. — Salman Rushdie

We do want the freedom to move scenes from episode to episode to episode. And we do want the freedom to move writing from episode to episode to episode, because as it starts to come in and as you start to look at it as a five-hour movie just like you would in a two-hour movie, move a scene from the first 30 minutes to maybe 50 minutes in. In a streaming series, you would now be in a different episode. It's so complicated, and we're so still using the rules that were built for episodic television that we're really trying to figure it out. — Jill Soloway

I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university, but I had a series of absolute career disasters and found myself making television programs about the nature of religion and about Christian history and started to discover about other religious traditions, and that was an absolute eye-opener for me. — Karen Armstrong

At Current, television is all we do - that's our business. We don't have amusement parks I have to worry about, we don't have environmental cases against us, we don't have a series of outdoor-advertising companies. — Keith Olbermann

For U.S. television series, I really like 'Dexter.' — Yuji Horii

I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person. — James L. Brooks

'Shogun' was a mini-series, so even though it went on television, we filmed it like a movie. — John Rhys-Davies

Our biggest art forms are film and television, and there hasn't been a great film about 9/11 yet, nor has there been a great television series. Something like The Wire gives us a rich and fully achieved picture of the wasteful, cruel War on Drugs; something like The White Ribbon gives a perspective on World War I that could only have been presented long after the event itself. — Teju Cole

Being a regular in a television series, for me - if I wanted to be a cop, I woulda went to cop school. If I wanted to be a doctor, I would've gone to medical school. You get trapped in your normal episodic television shows, basically doing the same thing. — Michael Hogan

I'm hoping that these series, that originally aired in the 80's and 90's, prove to be as entertaining online and on portable devices as they were when first broadcast on network television. — Stephen J. Cannell

Television moves so fast. A series moves at such a rapid pace and things are changing, episode to episode, where you're going, "Wait, why am I doing this? This last episode, you told me I was doing this." You're shooting at a moving target. — Mike Vogel

One of the most unattractive human traits, and so easy to fall into, is resentment at the sudden shared popularity of a previously private pleasure. Which of us hasn't been annoyed when a band, writer, artist or television series that had been a minority interest of ours has suddenly achieved mainstream popularity? When it was at a cult level we moaned at the philistinism of a world that didn't appreciate it, and now that they do appreciate it we're all resentful and dog-in-the-manger about it. — Stephen Fry

When I look at my career, the bulk of it has been television, and I love working in television. But there's a speed at which you do it. You're doing seven to ten pages a day on a series, and it's hard to feel like you're doing the detail-oriented work that I like to do. — Sarah Paulson

The actual time you're acting is miniscule compared to the time you're getting ready to do the work. The big difference on series television is, there's not a lot of hanging-out time. You're pumping those pages out, you're doing six, seven, eight pages a day. And I like that pace. — Joe Mantegna

Well, we look for sources of inspiration in pop culture in general. It's very important for us that, when it comes to storytelling, we don't look into other video games. We'd rather look into other mediums
movies, television series and books
for sources of inspiration. — Sam Lake

Every once in a while I go off to do a movie or a television series and I take my art with me. I can stay in character when I paint. — Jane Seymour

The noise you hear after people see something you do
whether it's a TV show or a movie
that always makes you see that thing slightly differently. Without question. The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of. And test-screening a movie can be helpful too. But the part that can be dangerous is when you take those notes as gospel, instead of taking them with a grain of salt. The key is to use the response as one of the tools in your box, as opposed to using it to determine what you do. — J.J. Abrams

Investigation was like a series of job interviews. Getting the door slammed in your face at every attempt wasn't the exciting life of the detective portrayed on film or television. — Kenneth Eade

I came into the advertising business in 1952, at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthruff and Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the 'Mad Men' television series without moving a desk. — Jerry Della Femina

Not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals. — Erma Bombeck

One of the great things about doing series television is the guest actors that you can have come on and play around with. — David Duchovny

You know what I want? The answer is, I truly don't know what I want. I don't want to do a television series. I want to do dramas as well as comedies, but I have no idea what kind or in what order. Just give me the chance at them. — Michael J. Fox

The days of television as we knew it growing up are over. You have a bigger, wider world audience on the Internet, larger than any American television series. People don't watch television in the same context as before. Nowadays they watch their television on the Internet at their convenience. That's the whole wave, and it's now - not the future. — Criss Angel

We met financial expectations for the quarter in a difficult economic environment. We also signed a two-year programming agreement with Home & Garden Television to launch two new cable television series, and launched the Martha Stewart Kids magazine These initiatives provide future revenue and earnings growth for the brand and build long-term value for shareholders. — Martha Stewart

Pretty soon we will no longer have movies. We will have television series only. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob. — Jennifer Garner

Working in television, many times you read a script, you work on the pilot, and then you play the waiting game to see if you're able to make it a series. — Mena Suvari

Every show on television has a downward trend because there are so many more things to watch. You can only deal with what is the benchmark of a hit series and 'Survivor' clearly remains a hit series. — Mark Burnett

If I have my way, I want to go start making really interactive television. Stuff where you can sit and watch real actors do a real series and they can get into some kind of gun battle and all of a sudden your television prompts you to pick up your controller and all of a sudden, you're playing a first-person shooter. — Zachary Levi

The best part of being on a television series for all those years is that you really get to hone your craft. — Steve Kanaly

It would be wonderful to become what Oprah has become: she is in such a class of her own, as an entrepreneur, as a performer and an icon. The idea of building a series of programmes and choosing people that I think have talent to do them would be a very interesting idea. I would love to show that television can have soul, depth and range. — Charlie Rose

I'm a great admirer, fan and consumer of television. I love serial drama. I have been a major fan of HBO's series for many years. — Todd Haynes

Without that discovery of the "moving photo," the world today would not be what it is: the new technology has become, primo, the principal agent of stupidity (incomparably more powerful than the bad literature of old: advertisements, television series); and secundo, the agent of worldwide indiscretion (cameras secretly filming political adversaries in compromising situations, immortalizing the pain of a half-naked woman laid out on a stretcher after a street bombing). It is true that film as art does also exist, but its significance is far more limited than that of film as technology, and its history is certainly shorter than that of any other art. — Milan Kundera

Every film is a remake of a previous film, or a remake of a television series that everyone loved in the 1960s, or a remake of a television series that everyone hated in the 1960s. Or it's a theme park ride; it will soon come to breakfast cereal mascots. — Alan Moore

I was watching cartoons on television and a commercial came on for one of the Batman series where I played a butler. And then my grandson looked up at me and he said, "Do you know Batman?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Really," I said, "Yeah." I said I know him very well. And he told all the boys at school, he said, "My grandpa knows Batman. Does your grandpa know Batman? OK, no. Mine does." — Michael Caine

Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD. — Jeff Lindsay

As somebody who has been an executive producer on a television series, I can tell you that increasing director diversity is as simple as hiring more women and more people of color. — Lesli Linka Glatter

I wish I'd not taken off all my clothes in my first television series, 'The Camomile Lawn.' — Jennifer Ehle

The difficult thing about shooting a television series is that you never have enough time. You really don't. — Greg Bryk

His boss, Isaac (Robert Guillaume), agrees but tells him to do it anyway "because it's television and this is how it's done." Dan replies, "Yeah, well, sitting in the back of the bus was how it was done until a forty-two-year-old lady moved up front." A few minutes later Isaac looks Dan in the eye and tells him, "Because I love you I can say this. No rich young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks." Finally, the voice of reason, which of course was heard on a canceled network TV series on cable. — Sarah Vowell

Increasingly, there's much better material on television, but there's not always the time and money to make it, so you've got to make sure you make it in the right place. It also depends on time commitment; a lot of directors will make a pilot, but a series is just a whole other level of involvement. — Cary Fukunaga

The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of. — J.J. Abrams

Mercy is the mark of a great man! (stabs defeated opponent) I guess I'm just a good man. (stabs opponent again) Well ... I'm alright. — Jane Espenson

One of the things I've been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it's some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books. — Kevin Barry

That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job. — James L. Brooks

I love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies. — Nicolas Winding Refn

I loved playing Walternate because he was completely the same character, version 1985, and then it developed in such a different way, physically and mentally. So, to be able to play that, in the same television series, as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift for me. — John Noble

I've done about 15 movies and four television series in Mexico. My last two movies were the highest grossing in Mexican-cinema history - 'Nosotros los Nobles' and 'Instructions Not Included.' — Karla Souza

I love a bit of political drama; 'The West Wing' is probably my favourite television series of all time. — David Tennant

If the picture is not an artistic picture, it's show, like television. Television series are very funny, but it's a collective production. An industrial art. A car is not made by a person, it's made by a group of creators, only to go to the market to buy your cigarettes. That is a car - they are not a big art, they are a little art. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I've always liked adventure television. Pre-'Survivor,' I did a series on cable called 'Eco-Challenge,' an adventure race with experts mainly, and here we have 'Expedition Impossible.' I like the outdoors and I like doing something fresh for television you haven't seen before. — Mark Burnett

Well, you know, I don't think anyone who writes a television series has a master plan from the beginning, and knows all the character traits, and everything that's going to happen. — Charlie Day

I wrote for television some, animation. Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, Son of Batman, things of that nature were made and I'm happy about that, but now the recent film and TV stuff have validated me, as if that makes any sense. — Joe R. Lansdale

Being on a television series is sort of life-altering on every level. — Victor Garber

The fact 'Twin Peaks' had a life at all took most of us in the cast by surprise. We thought it would be too unusual for network television. The original intention was that it would be a two-hour movie. If the network didn't want to pick it up as a series, it could just show that. But ABC took a chance. — Kyle MacLachlan

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television. — Denis Leary

The announcement that there is a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen television series hasn't caused me to drastically alter my opinions. Now it seems they are recycling things that have already proven not to work. — Alan Moore

In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn. — Catherynne M Valente

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series. — Julian Fellowes

Sometimes I think some of my fellow novelists who have not worked in television and film are very naive about this process. They get an offer and there's the dump truck full of money and they sign it, they cash the check and then they're not involved in the series. They may get invited to the premiere and they come out of the premiere looking like all of their children had just been gassed, with a stunned look on their face because everything has been changed. — George R R Martin

I played an artist in a comedy called 'Rooster.' It was a zany film by Glen Larson, a friend who produced several successful television series including 'Magnum PI.' — LeRoy Neiman

I'm narrating the television series Biography. I'm still involved in my music - I have a new album out. I have an animated project in development. I'm writing a lot of things and you never know if one of them is going to become a six or seven year project. — Bill Mumy

I have been approached now and again about sitcoms, but, with very few exceptions, one simply needs to move to L.A. for at least a year or two these days if one wants to develop a series - which is what writing a pilot means. I've also been approached about writing episodes for sitcoms, but in order to do that one actually has to watch sitcoms ... Life's too short for television, and I don't what it on my actual gravestone, HE STARED AT A BOX FOR 10,000 HOURS. — David Ives

I think back to the Modern Family pilot when we didn't know that Julie Bowen had a spotty party girl past, but that's something that we layered in, throughout the first season. That's just part of the fun of series television. You get to discover these things. — Jason Winer

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall.' — Walter Mosley

I'm married now, so I have a life. I had to get a life. That's one thing I really had to do, you know. You do that kind of work on television series after television series and you don't have a life. So, that's part of what I did while I was gone, I got a life. — Kate Jackson

Television has changed. There's obviously the generic shows, but on HBO and AMC, there are some really great series, so I'm not closed off to television. If there's an amazing role with amazing people and a great story, I'd definitely be open to it. — Amanda Crew

In between bites of banana, Mr. Remora would tell stories, and the children would write the stories down in notebooks, and every so often there would be a test. The stories were very short, and there were a whole lot of them on every conceivable subject. "One day I went to the store to purchase a carton of milk," Mr. Remora would say, chewing on a banana. "When I got home, I poured the milk into a glass and drank it. Then I watched television. The end." Or: "One afternoon a man named Edward got into a green truck and drove to a farm. The farm had geese and cows. The end." Mr. Ramora would tell story after story, and eat banana after banana, and it would get more and more difficult for Violet to pay attention. — Lemony Snicket

We couldn't get it off the ground as a film, but then we begin to think television, and Lowell pushed it out there and Jim and Nick were anxious to do Hap and Leonard anyway, and I had worked with them before, so it was a perfect story. I love the series. I hope there's a second. — Joe R. Lansdale

The most telling thing about 'Fargo,' both the now-classic movie and the television series, is that it doesn't take place in Fargo. — Steve Erickson

Coming back to a television series puts you back in the limelight and gives you a platform for your ideas. If you're not acting on a series, you don't get the ability to communicate to people. — Dennis Weaver

I had never worked in television before 'Freaks and Geeks,' and 'New Girl' is the first time since that I've worked on a series that is actually a series and not just a pilot. — Jake Kasdan

I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never twenty-two, so I was petrified of that. — Lennie James

If TV sitcoms idealized the American suburbs of the 1960s, the works of the artistic elite disparaged them ceaselessly, then and now. The songs of Pete Seeger, novels like Revolutionary Road, the stories of John Cheever, movies like Pleasantville and American Beauty, television series like Mad Men: in all of them, that long-ago land of lawns and houses is depicted as a country of stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There's bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying. But — Andrew Klavan

What is absolutely true is that any good [Television] series has a specific voice. And I think that voice is almost exclusively the domain of the executive producer ... As a staff writer you're not being called upon to be the great creative person. You're sort of called upon to understand the characters and their voices and put them through certain paces. — Howard Gordon

I'm not surprised 'The Avengers' has such enduring popularity, because it was a groundbreaking series that changed television. It was the first show that put its leading man and leading lady on an equal footing and showed a woman fighting and kicking and throwing men around. That was a radical departure in its time. — Patrick Macnee