Jeff Daniels Quotes

I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.

I've met big-name actors doing Hollywood films, and they've said that all they want is an in at HBO and their own show.

I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.

Movies, particularly the big hit movies, are all just special effects. But on television, the writers are in control of the shows, and they control the scripts.

In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.

In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.

I'd been acting since I was a teenager. I'd come to the point where I was writing my own movies of the week for TV. That was fun.

As I've probably said before, television exposes writers to far more of the nitty-gritty than film does.

TV is where writers get to tell interesting stories. Because writers, for the most part, run television.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.

I'll always love movies. But there's something I love very much about TV, when you shoot episodes while other episodes are still being written.

Without writers, none of the entertainment would exist. It starts with writers. Writers are the most important piece of the entire puzzle.

For sure, without question, the writing is better on TV pound for pound than movies because the businesses have changed so much. So all the great writers would rather work for TV, and they do.

It is harder to get adult, character-driven material on television than it used to be, but there are lots of other places that you can go to sell it. If you can do it for basic cable or pay cable, we have those outlets.

I don't know if I'm always going to be acting. Maybe when I grow up, I will be a scriptwriter. I already have a few scripts in my head.

What the world does not need is another script or television writer.

The fact is that television, even before the movies, offered the chance to control our work and to get to do it again when we did something right. So television has always been better to writers than any other medium for a long time.

There's exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing - unless you're going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you're an action hero.

High-concept one-liners were huge when I got my start in the film industry.

I've always loved to write. I've been writing a lot longer than I've been acting, and I hope to continue to do that and maybe do it a little bit more in terms of, like, writing movies that I could potentially act in.

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

If you can write and create original characters, do your own show, develop your own material, it gives you more power than just waiting around to be hired.

We joke a lot about how, in Hollywood, the writer is one step below the doormat. That's not self-loathing. That's true!

I like scripts. I spend a lot of time writing them.