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.

What was so great about Lost was that it came to the front door as a drama that was straight-up and really gave you the sci-fi underneath it all. It backed into sci-fi show, at least in my opinion. As soon as they got hooked, they were like, "Okay, I'm there."

There are a lot of shows that have secrets and string people along and use the secrets of the narrative engine to keep people coming back every week. I don't know if those programs even have an answer. I don't know how they build their shows.

I fell in love with the possibilities of telling the story in the future, and married that quickly.

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.

Life is painful sometimes. It touches everyone, so you may as well try to look for other answers and find peace. So, it is difficult to write those types of things because nobody wants to tell sad stories. I think that I'll always tell stories about human hope. I would love to be able to tell somebody, "It's okay. It's all right. Be a good person." That's what my job is, in life.