Jonathan Nolan Quotes

A TV show is constant work, which is the great thing about it.

When you're doing a television series, unless you really pay attention to your life, it doesn't leave very much time for anything else.

You do show after show after show and get them done and on the air. Television devours material. We work a minimum of 12, 14 hours, and often 15, 18 hours a day.

I remember what it was like to be doing 'Lost' and how creatively immersive it was. I just couldn't really engage on anything else, other than 'Lost;' I was just thinking about it all the time, and then there was just the pure workload, the 70- or 80-hour weeks.

Television shows, especially hour-longs, are hard, tiring work. Those people are very tired and very rich. But they're working really hard, and to create the illusion of having the time of your life like that, you really got to give it up to the people who do it.

I don't work all day, every day on 'Rizzoli & Isles,' but I work every day. It may be a scene or two, or it may be an enormous workload, but there's really not a lot of room for anything else, and that's the choice I made. And that's why I stayed away from TV before: Because I know that that's what it is.

I don't want to carry a network show. I don't want to give up 10 months, working 17 hours a day, up at five in the morning.

Being a producer is more than a 24 hour job.

'Law & Order' is a six-month shoot. Everything has to be crammed in. I had so much fun, but it wasn't a holiday. We had seriously long days, and we'd finish at 8 P.M. and start again at 7 A.M. We were doing six-day weeks, which sometimes tripped onto the seventh. But I loved it all.

I love TV and am happy doing TV shows.

I'd love to do a talk show. But I'm too busy for it. It's just too much work.

Television is my home. It's a special breed of person that can do nine months on and three months off, with 22 episodes of one-hour shows. It's very hard work. It can be a grind. It's not a grind for me. I relish in that.

I'm interested in producing more TV shows.

I basically work all the time.

On '30 Rock,' the hours were really intense, and I was often on set. I'm glad I didn't have a kid then because I don't think I would have ever seen her. I would work 15-hour days, and weekends, too.

I feel like I don't have much of a preference. With TV, it's just a longer process, so you need to be more sure that you really want to be involved in it for a longer time than you would be with film.

It is true I work 16 hours a day.

Unluckily actors don't get much free time, they are demanded every time and everywhere.

There's hardly a single show that doesn't have a Canadian on it.

'Spooks' was unique. It took up such a lot of your life - I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That's six months of your life.

I've never been in the studio world; TV is as close as I get to the more corporate approach to making entertainment.

When we work for daily soaps, it is very time consuming: like, we work for 12-14 hours. But, doing a show that's interesting makes it worth it.

Well directing TV is very time-consuming, so if you are going to direct TV, a season will take a year out of your life.

Sitting around with funny people, banging out jokes and creating a television show. I have no hobbies, no outside interests. I'm fine with spending 14 hours a day putting a show together with tape and string.

I do like the process of producing. Later in my career, like when I had the TV show, I was a producer and I've been on a few things.