Damon Lindelof Quotes

Sometimes we get frustrated ourselves and decide it's time to download a big chunk of mythology. And then the audience says, 'I find this confusing and alienating and too weird.' So then we pull back, and they say, 'You're not giving us enough'.

You can watch an episode of Friends or an episode of Law & Order and just drop in, but you're not going to in the middle of Season 4, Episode 5 of Lost. It's like picking up a Harry Potter book and flipping to a chapter. You have to read it from beginning to end.

When you're a writer and you're a producer, traditionally the junkets are really focused on the beautiful people and nobody wants to talk to you.

All great sci-fi is: Be careful what you wish for.

I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking.

If I went for a long period in my life where I was unemployed and I was unable to make a living and the only way for me to basically provide for my family was, "Hey, we're bringing Lost back!", then I would probably consider it. But I feel like it would be a betrayal to the fandom, and myself, to do anymore Lost, because we had such an adequate period of time to end the show.

The best jokes on The Leftovers are the ones that make you feel a little sick to your stomach.

I think that 'The Shield' was a phenomenal series finale.

I always remember liking school.

I've always believed that a good twist is one that, when it is presented to the audience, half of them say, 'I saw that coming.' And half of them are completely and totally shocked. Because if you don't have the half that saw it coming, then it wasn't fair: You never gave the audience a chance to guess it.

I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories.

Star Wars' is a galaxy a long time ago, far, far away. 'Star Wars' is not about our future.

Michael Arndt, that guy - you're just supposed to say nice things about other writers, but I worship Michael Arndt.

Part of the fun of the movie is understanding exactly why we called it Prometheus. And also, it sounds really pretentious, like Inception, so we were just like, "Yeah, that makes the movie sound really smart!" It's so much better then my original title, Explosion. Well, there might be an explosion in the movie.

You can't just come out and do the same moves that you always do because someone just basically came into the center of the ring and spun around on their head and did a back flip.

It's just immensely frustrating that things like Breaking Bad get made that are kind of perfect! There's not even a bad episode of Breaking Bad, let alone a bad season. I want to be able to say, "Hey everybody, it's impossible to make a show where every episode is great!" No it's not.

I feel like the big twist shows are now off the table. I think Westworld was probably the last one to Trojan horse this idea of the young man in black. They were doing non-linear storytelling, but disguising it. Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy have spoken openly about how they just didn't think people were going to figure it out that fast.

I'm trying to focus as much on the here and now as possible. To live my life in a way that the humans that I know here on the planet Earth feel like they've been treated with respect by me, whether they're people that I'm very close to or the audience who's watching my work.

I can't live my life under the sort of "I cannot fail" philosophy, because then every time I do fail, which feels more inevitable than me being perfect all the time, it's going to be soul crushing. And more importantly, I'll never take any risks.

If you're constantly hamstrung by worry that people aren't going to like it, you can't do your job.

At some point, you can't take a risk just to take a risk because that's a betrayal, in and of itself.

I felt like if I said something positive on Twitter, it got no play. But if I said something negative on Twitter, it was a billion retweets and so that was giving me a Pavlovian response to be mean, and I don't want to be mean. We all have mean thoughts. They should not be broadcast on Twitter. You don't need to see mean things.

I'm not sitting around thinking of ideas for TV shows.

I've always been fascinated by Disneyland and Disney World, and my favorite part of the park was always Tomorrowland.

My gravestone will say,'Here Lies Damon Lindelof - Or Does He?

I think 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy has a very satisfying ending, and there's not really that deep of a mythological construct.

Everything I've ever been a fan of, whether it's Star Wars or the New York Jets, I've also been very hard on at times. It's sort of like, I go to a Jets game, I want them to win, but the minute they fumble the ball, I go, "I f**king knew it! F**king Jets!" That's part of loving something. As long as you love it, you have carte blanche to critique it as well, of course. That's part of being a fan of anything.

Connecting dots is not that rewarding of an experience.

Just put your best foot forward and hope for the best. You also have to acknowledge that you're going to make mistakes.

If you're the guy who basically shows up with coal at the locomotive, they will put it in the train. Like, they won't even assess whatever or not it's good coal. Just throw it in there.

The fun thing about doing origin stories is you are introducing the audience to characters.

The fundamental law of nature is to not know too much about yourself.

But I do think that, when you slow the conveyor belt down, the quality control tends to go up. You have a lot more time between seasons to talk about what worked and what didn't work, and plan for the future. And the pacing of the storytelling, particularly for on-going serialized dramas, means that you don't need to do non-essential episodes, just because you have to fill this pre-existing schedule.

I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale.

Some of the things I love the most are when a writer or a visionary takes on sort of an iconic character and then spins it. Like with Frank Miller, Batman was this one thing for basically forty years, and then Frank Miller came along and said he can also be this other thing. And Christopher Nolan came along and said he can also be this other thing. The idea of taking iconic comic book characters or superhero characters or mythic characters and subverting the genre or coming up with a new idea is something that's really interesting to me.

Hire people you get along with, and then let them do what they do best.

It's television. The reality of it is, if you go on the boards and people are saying, "I saw that coming," or "This is lame," or "I can't believe they're doing this again..." Having been one of those people myself, I know better, and try to avoid it.

Finding meaning in the relationships that we have with one another - that's the only way to achieve any kind of fundamental true grace and that points to where it all ends up. It's let's stop being away some place, let's be here. It's, let's be in this.

Look, we can definitively agree that cable is far superior to network. That isn't to say that there can't be a great network drama or comedy that makes 20-plus episodes a year. We know that there are, and there have been.

I promised myself I would never be one of those people who complained about "Oh man, lots of people are interested in our movie and now I gotta talk about it."

I place a higher value on work ethic than talent, because, in certain areas, you just need to cast, you need to cast actors with talent, you need to hire directors with talent, but I've worked with very talented people who have a poor work ethic, and the outcome is less desirable than people who are less talented and have an incredible work ethic.

Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world.

One person's magical thinking is another person's cynicism.

Ultimately, I just felt like Twitter brought out the worst in me. It made me super defensive when I was attacked, because you're under a constant state of attack. No one should be able to check their @ mentions, because Twitter is the equivalent of "Hey, those three people over there that are whispering... They're whispering about you! Do you want to know what they're saying?"

I don't think anybody wants to see a dour Star Trek movie.

I'll never be immune to criticism, and that's okay, and I'm very comfortable with that.

People are disappointed when the world doesn't end on their watch.

As a storyteller, you also don't want to make people feel like they're left out, like other people who have read the book have an interior knowledge of this show, and the degree of difficulty in watching it is much higher.