I think to an extent every human being needs to be redeemed somewhat or at least needs to look at themselves and say, 'I've made mistakes, I'm off course, I need to change.' Which is probably the hardest thing for a human being to do, and maybe that's why it interests me so.

I've seen [Donald Trump] appear in a film or a TV show cameo or the tabloids, and he's a grotesquely distasteful human being and always has been, always made me want to take a shower. But other people fell in love with him as a reality star. So does that mean that the entertainment industry is doing something wrong? I think reality TV answered that question a long time ago: Yes, it's doing something terribly wrong. But there's some great reality TV, and I'm not bagging on it completely.

I'm never interested in movies where you don't care about the people you're watching, and that's my biggest quibble about horror, that kids have gotten stupider and stupider.

Politics, glamor, fame - they're all mixed up together, and they always have been.

The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.

I'm not great at fear. I made the least frightening vampire show ever on TV. I'm pretty much good at heroic narratives and making people laugh, and that's pretty much it.

If I wrote what I really think, I would be so sad all the time. We create to fill a gap - not just to avoid the idea of dying, it's to fill some particular gap in ourselves.