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"A producer must have more common sense than all the people working around you. You can't afford to be the artist. You may think you are, and you may truly be, but it's got to be the kind of artist who's inside somewhere. You can't be crazy. You can't suddenly be like a director who once said to me, when we were over-length, 'Martin, you've got to call New York and tell them there can't be any commercials this week.' Well, if you are the kind of idiot that would get on the phone and say 'no commercials this week,' you'd never see the inside of a studio again."

"I was an actor myself. The process of acting is extremely painful. I know that doesn't sound logical to most people, but all good work is self-revelation. That's true for performing artists as well. If I can help them to feel any more secure, and any more unafraid of releasing whatever part of themselves they have to, I understand that I can help them that way. They feel that. I don't even have to articulate it."

"Once NBC and CBS had television set up, they had to put stuff on the air. I was one of the most used actors in New York because I memorized lines quickly and I never got flustered because the camera was live. And I enjoyed it. It was an exciting time. I did hundreds of shows, sometimes two in a week because I was the guy who could do it and some people were terrified of it. But I wasn't."