Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.

I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something. Because I had shown them something they hadn't seen before, and it amused them. That's the combo platter. That's a perfect moment.

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.

People feel removed from sexism. 'I'm not a sexist, but I'm not a feminist.' They think there's this fuzzy middle ground. There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.

I always watch what I say. I am what I say.

Stories come from violence, they come from sex. They come from death. They come from the dark places that everyone has to go to, kind of wants to, or doesn't, but needs to deal with. If you raise a kid to think everything is sunshine and flowers, they're going to get into the real world and die. That's the reason fairy tales are so creepy, because we need to encapsulate these things, to inoculate ourselves against them, so that when we're confronted by the genuine horror that is day-to-day life we don't go insane.

I love a straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-Men', because he is square.