On getting his start in the new medium.

Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, Sumner Locke Elliot, JP Miller, and all of the group of writers that I knew, we grew up at the same time and our eyes were on the theater....That was the Emerald City. That was the goal. Now, television came on after World War II, and television was a pauper. It had no money. No "self-respecting writer"...would deign to write for television....Even drunken screenwriters wouldn't write for television....So who was there left? It was us. It was kids who would work for 65 cents....And so with a very patronizing attitude you thought, "well, if I could make a few bucks doing that, it would give me time to write the great American play." It didn't take too much experience to realize that television was a medium all in itself, and that it was a career all in itself, and it was a thrilling one. But we stumbled into it by being snobs if I may say so...They would give anyone a chance. I look back on it, and I think: "Weren't we lucky to be there?" Because it was pure luck that we were there.

On being in the control room.

It was the stillness before you went on the air that was so dramatic because everybody would be in place in plenty of time, but everybody would be silent. Nobody talking, nobody moving. The hands [were] on the keys but not moving. The only thing moving was the second hand on the big clock and then when it hit the top everybody started to move. It was very dramatic...that peace, that calm before you took the dive into it. It was a great thrilling moment and you suddenly loved every actor and you just wanted them all to be rich and have children and go to happy graves.

On television audiences.

Audiences felt very proprietary about live television. They felt they had discovered all the actors, the writers, the playwrights, and the directors. They loved it if their favorite actor made a mistake. They said, "oh, he's never done that in any other show. My goodness, did you hear how he flubbed that line?" They were very personal about it. It was like a cottage industry and everybody was your customer.

On writing.

The process is constant trial and error, and the test of the writer is to keep with it until you get through all the complications to the simplicity, because simplicity is the great thing....The best dramatic realism is always high art. It's like Paddy Chayefsky &emdash; in the way those boys talked on Saturday night in "Marty." Those boys don't talk that way up in the Bronx. Paddy Chayefsky made you think they talked that way....[The art] is making very artificial dialogues and situations seem absolutely real.

On "Playhouse 90."

My first "Playhouse 90" was glamour....Glamour had come to television because CBS had built this magnificent Television City in Los Angeles....Television had come to deserve buildings for itself. This was a whole new idea, that you'd have a building for television. "Playhouse 90" was one of the first shows to go into that mammoth building.

On live television.

You can never bring it back. Because the thing is, if you don't have to do it, no one in their right mind would ever do it. It's only because we had to....They are so used to perfection on television that the imperfections of live television just are monumental. They stand out. You can't get that kind of slick, canned, bottled perfection in a live performance. You just can't get it. You wouldn't want it.

On the "Golden Age" of television.

A golden age is a flowering, plain and simple. Historical-ly, artistically, it is a flowering. It is not a zenith. It has never been considered a zenith. It is a flowering and that is what television was doing in the fifties, it was flowering....It was a decade of opportunity. Never anywhere at any time was there so much work for creative people. And that's pretty golden. I always say there was gold dust in the air. As long as men like Fred Coe were there, and Herb Brodkin, and all the other great producers, and Arthur Penn, and Delbert Mann, as long as they were there, that was a golden time. It was maybe not a golden age, but it was a golden time. I really resent the so-called, sneering "golden age of television." It's so condescending and patronizing.

On television's power.

It's hard for young people today to realize what it was like to grow up before television, because television, I think, is the most revolutionary event of the 20th Century. I think it's more important and more influential in the world than "the bomb," because the television camera reduced the world to your living room, literally. [Young people today] knew things when [they] were six years old that I didn't know 'til I was 40.

Compiled by Brian Tessier.