Amy Sherman-Palladino

Amy: The thing about The Sopranos is those characters are just brilliant. The fact that you could be so chilled and afraid of this man yet so adore and love him, it's an amazing testament to the incredible writing and beautiful performances.

Amy: Families constantly change and evolve and die and have a stroke and slam the door and 'I hate you' and 'I love you,' that can go on forever. You never solve problems with a family. With a cop, he eventually retires.

Amy: (comparing her "Gilmore Girls" characters to her and her husband) I think a lot of Lorelai's viewpoints are my viewpoints. But I'm a Jewish kid from the Valley. These are two WASPy kids from Connecticut. It's more like human aspects - there are certain aspects of Rory that are similar to my husband. He's organized. He loves to make lists. It takes us 12 years to buy a radio, because he has to investigate.

Amy: One of my great regrets is that I didn't go to college. I had very little patience for school, and it was never stressed in my household.

Amy: To be really good, you have to be willing to have everybody in the world hate you.

Amy: (Jack Bauer is the main character of the action-suspense series "24") Oh, I love that Jack Bauer - I think he'd make a great guy for Lorelai, and think of him sitting at the stuffy Gilmore parents' dinner table!

Amy: (on ending "Gilmore Girls") We have a very specific idea of how we wanted the series to ultimately end, and there's a myriad of ways to get there, which could have accommodated another few seasons.

Amy: We try not to teach any lessons. I have no interest in trying to tell people how to lead their lives.

Amy: The wonderful thing about a family show is that until everybody is dead in the family, there's always a story to tell.

Amy: There was a time when women ruled the airwaves - Murphy Brown, Roseanne, Mary Tyler Moore. Not enough women are writing television... If you're too strong or too opinionated, they consider that not as feminine.

Amy: These television shows that have 14 shots of somebody looking at each other with the wind blowing through their hair drive me insane.

Amy: I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.