People pitch me the crazy mystery mind-blowing thing all the time. My response is, 'Great, but how do the characters feel about it, and how do we reveal new facets and new dimensions of who they are?'

We are definitely living in the butterfly effect theory, where any change that is made in the past is going to have a very logical cause-and-effect ramification of the present.

In TV and movies, you kill yourself spending all this time to think up the symbolism or what if that deer that runs across your hero's path somehow conveys what's going on inside your hero's head? When a lot of times, you just want to hear what he's thinking.

I have a bad habit, in the shows that I run, of killing off the people that I love.

There are so many shows out there, so you really need to work hard to separate yourself and cut through the static.

I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.

It's hard to make a lot of pop culture references where there's no pop culture.