In television, I don't feel constraints. I feel a lot freedom to maneuver.

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

Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on 'Lost') allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they're getting killed off on the show, they're basically, like, 'Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?'

We all look at ourselves in the mirror and think, 'Am I good?'

I think that we, as writers, get excited by risk. When we are feeling comfortable and familiar, I wouldn't say that we get bored, but the energy in the room gets flat. When we're most excited and when the show is the most fun, it's when we're duking things out.

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 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.