[on the whimsical departure of 'Bert Cooper' (Robert Morse) from "Mad Men"] The show is famous for being Byzantine, but I can't believe that someone singing 'The Best Things in Life Are Free' was up for conversation. That was EXACTLY what I was trying to say.

The fiction of John Cheever has a voice filled with irony and comedy and pain that, at some level, I'm always seeking to emulate. His short stories present themselves as episodes of TV do - with plenty of story and flawed characters presented without judgment.

[re mentor David Chase } I talked to him quite a bit about [Not Fade Away (2012)] and I'm a huge fan of it. David's process is so arduous to begin with. To explain the difference between the joy and the compulsion is really hard. When I was in North Carolina, and David was finishing his movie, I spoke to him on the phone, and I talked to my wife afterwards and she said, 'You guys just keep sticking your neck out there.' My wife's an architect, so she definitely has a very high-risk artistic profession and she gets the idea that you're really sensitive, you really care what people think, you have a low threshold for criticism. It's like asking why people do heroin when they know it will kill them. I gotta give up at some point.

I was watching the Oscars, and I saw Jennifer Lawrence [fall] on the steps, and I thought: That was the perfect acceptance speech. How do you avoid the envy and appearing arrogant? How do you say the perfect thing, now that you're not an underdog anymore? I don't think she did it on purpose, but you see that and see how she behaves, and you're like, it could not go any better than that. If I was writing an acceptance speech, I would have it start with someone falling off the steps.

[re Mad Men (2007)] When the season ends, that's the end of the show for me. I'm out of stuff. I never know what's going to be the tension in between the seasons. I didn't know that after Season 3 the audience would not be convinced that Don was divorced. As soon as I heard, "Will he get divorced?" I'm like, well, I guess they don't know. That's the tension. "Will he start a new agency?" I guess that's the tension. What I start hearing over the break starts to inform where I start the next year.

[re The Sopranos (1999)] The casting of Gandolfini is very important because he allows us, because of his natural charisma, to enjoy all those fantasies of power that we wish we had. We love Tony because he has all of our animal appetites. Everyone would love to walk into a room and pick the biggest sandwich and take the best chair and have sex with the best-looking women. But at home he has the same life that we do. You can't get any respect at home! That's just the way it is.

Mad Men (2007) is non-judgmental about human behavior. These people do a lot of what we would consider unlikable and unpleasant things. We all do. Rather than lying to you about human behavior, even though there's plenty of wish-fulfillment in the show, it acknowledges that it's hard to be a person. I think that's a part of what resonates with audiences.

Where do I put ourselves in the history of television? I will put myself and the show under the category of 'very lucky'.

[re_Mad Men (2007) We're on the landscape in a permanent way.That is nice to hear. I'm in the entertainment business, where you're only as good as your last show. I'm very aware of the transient nature of the audience and the business itself. Will we be in the books that list shows that won awards? Probably. Will there be some conversation about the show in the future? I hope so. I mean, my kids know who Columbo (1971) is, and that was a long time ago.

[on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," describing how a personal crisis of his was the inspiration for his creation of Mad Men (2007)] My inspiration for writing this piece--the first moment of interaction with really where Don was--was: I was 35 years old; I had a job on a network sitcom; it was rated number nine (which means I was basically in Major League Baseball for my job--there's 300 people in the country that have this job, and I had one). I had three children, and I was like what--this incredible life--you know, I was like, 'What is wrong with me? Why am I unhappy? Why is there so much going on in my head that I can't express to other people because it's all awful? And what is enough? And I'm going to die one day.' And I'm looking at it and saying, 'This is it?' It could be an excuse to behave very badly.