Jeff always says, "In the cinema, everybody goes to sci-fi. Those are the biggest movies. But, in television, nobody wants to touch it with a barge pole." It's strange. I think it's because maybe there's a legacy of television shows that depicted sci-fi in a certain way that turns off a lot of viewers, so maybe there's a negative connotation.

What's a hero if not for its journey.

I'm not interested in leaving it open-ended. That would just cause me frustration. I wouldn't be satisfied. What's really cool about Fringe, and one of the things we did do right, was that the way we chose to tell the story was that, with every season, there was a closure and then a new chapter. That allowed us to actually make the closure.

The way that I work is that I try to work in metaphors, and you can't write a metaphor unless you know where you're going, so I always think about the future.

It took me a long time to get to a position where I can feel that, with my art, I'm capable of saying what I need to say, and once I finish it, I can sit back and say, "It's done, and I'm okay with that. People can judge it good or bad, and it doesn't matter. I'm okay with it because I said something I needed to say." That's a really hard place to get, as an artist.

I want to feel that my characters evolved into a place that they deserved, that was sometimes unexpected, but where I would feel satiated that logically they have come to a conclusion that makes me feel satisfied.

I just have a different impression of the human race. I think we're really resilient. I think there are a lot of cynical people out there right now, and probably for good reason. But I think that ever cynic is really a damaged romantic, and they really, really, really want things to be good. And if that's the case, I don't need to tell a story that says, "Humanity, look what you've done. Now you can't go out. There's no sun. Look how you've wrecked the world." That's not me. That's not my job.