God bless Hollywood and all that it stands for, but, you know, people tend to peak in their 40s, and then it's all downhill from there.

I've always loved the genre of virus movies or Armageddon movies - anything that involves being trapped with the cute boy in detention when the zombies are attacking.

I feel like Caroline Forbes is such a crucial element... on 'The Vampire Diaries.'

Happiness is not necessarily a drama magnet.

I wanted people to talk about the finale of 'The Vampire Diaries' as one of their favorites, which is a lofty ambition, but it certainly drove me hard creatively to make sure that we had put as much thought and love into it as we possibly could.

I'm a night owl; I could work until 6 in the morning without even thinking about it.

I would never say no to continuing to explore the - somebody coined the phrase for me the other day, which I love - 'TVDU,' 'The 'Vampire Diaries' Universe.' I have no desire to exploit it, but I also know that there are plenty of opportunities for stories left to be told.

Because I was such a student of pop culture growing up, I love that on the list of things that I got to work on in my first years out of college were 'Scream' and 'Dawson's Creek' and, ultimately now, 'The Vampire Diaries,' which generations below me grew up on and can quote. I love that. I think that is the coolest thing in the world.

If the day-to-day culture is saying it's OK to not be inclusive or tolerant, that it's OK to be bigoted, then it's your responsibility to double down and make it OK in storytelling to be inclusive and tolerant.

I think that when you're exploring themes of humanity and what defines a hero and what makes us our best self and what makes us our worst self, you're going to stumble into territories of societal issues and that kind of thing. Sometimes you have accidents where you're not trying, but then the opportunity just presents itself. and you lean into it.

When you have to spread heroism across too many players, you don't get to really dig deep into each of them as much as you'd want to.

Growing up, I remember watching 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'L.A. Law' and being so obsessed with it.

If I walk into the editing room, it's six hours lost. I'm massaging frames. I'm, like, 'Oh, take six frames off that shot. Hit the music cue right there.' I will drive everybody crazy if left to my own devices in that room. So I try to do everything I can by staying out of the way.

I had a moment where I wrote a movie script, and it was my first movie job, and I was very excited to do it, and my only goal was really not to get fired off of it.

The whole reason I like these virus movies is because I read 'The Stand' when I was in junior high and thought it was the greatest book I'd ever read.

'Ghost World' was such an incredibly difficult episode to find the right tone for. I remember at the time it was very divisive because some people hated it - they thought it was cheesy and hokey - and I loved it. When I saw it, I cried my head off, and I was so happy.

Speaking only for myself, the ideal finale to me is 'Friday Night Lights,' where you have loved and worshipped a show for all these years, you get to come back, celebrate the characters, finish up their journeys, and send everyone out with a feeling of, 'My God, I'm so grateful that I got to know these people.'

There is no definitive end to anybody's story when you're dealing with the fluidity of chemistry, because when it gets stale, you want out.

We all have our own party fantasy that we've either lived or wanted to live in New Orleans.

TV is really, really, really hard work. You sacrifice a lot of your personal life, a lot of your sanity, just to do one show.

An actor's only perception is of their character, and they're looking at one piece. A writer is looking at the entire story. They're going to see things that the writer didn't see because they're only looking through their lens.

The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.

As a fan, I hated most of 'The Day After Tomorrow' movie except for the part where Emmy Rossum and Jake Gyllenhaal were stuck in the library, and I thought, 'Oh, I like this now.' There's something about bringing people together in odd circumstances and exploring the petri dish of what happens.

The supernatural world, the sci-fi world - they give you scenarios that can truly be life or death.

The one thing that always drove me crazy, especially on soaps, was when someone would have something they were hiding, and then six months later, they were still holding onto that secret, and the world has come to a complete, total end as a result of it. If they'd only just confessed!

I think, make it as beautiful as you can, and then rip it away. That's my sadistic thought as a storyteller.

Every night, I will write until I'm done. Until my eyes are burning and tearing, and I can't see the computer screen anymore, till I finish the script, till I get to the point where I'm happy stopping, till I get everything off my plate, because I hate going to bed with a full plate. It makes me very neurotic.

In junior high, when we got our first VCR, I used to tape four soaps a day. I was a diehard 'General Hospital' fan from when I was nine to 25.

The vampire is the new James Dean.

The funny thing about the entertainment business is that we all feel like kids playing in a candy store, but we are entrusted with millions and millions and millions of dollars and an entire industry that can thrive or die on whether or not we do our jobs well or not.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.

I can stay up until the sun's up, no problem, but I do not like getting up in the morning.

'Originals' is a show that is not about struggling as a vampire but reveling in it. It's about embracing vampirism.

There's a lot of storylines over the years where you feel like it's maybe meant to be more important than it ends up being, and that's because we jump ship, and you gracefully extricate yourself from that as well as you can.

'The Reckoning' is one of my proudest hours. I love that episode so much.

I think Joss Whedon is a genius.

When you have an ensemble where characters pair off so easily, it becomes extremely isolating in the story world. You can end up with two actors who have not seen each other face to face all season long.

I read 'Tiger Beat' and 'Bop' from the time I was 9, 10, 11 years old. I loved movies. I saw 'E.T.' seven times. I used to yell at people who called me when 'L.A. Law' was on because they should know better. So I just have been so in love with the business of Hollywood since I can remember.

I learned more about who I am and how to be a great worker - and a great artistic worker - from doing student theater. I was a stage manager. I was an assistant stage manager. I was on the running crew. I did probably 25 shows at Northwestern - all musicals, of course.

'Scream' was the first thing he'd ever written that had gotten made, and I'd been in Hollywood for less than two years.

A long-running show leaves behind a legacy of storytellers and their relationship with the audience.

I work very hard so that I can be present all the time for what I do and then carve out little pockets of time as I desire for my personal life.

Showrunning is an arrogant job. You have to be arrogant and hold yourself strong in order for people to hear you. Confidence partners with arrogance. The only person you have to trust is yourself. The only instinct you can trust is your own.

The problem with ratings is that you can give yourself a million reasons why they are what they are.

I learned that getting a movie made in Hollywood is a near impossibility, and the process can be a wild adventure. TV is a lot more consistently productive - no offense to the beautiful world of feature film.

Of every movie that I've seen multiple times, of every TV show that I was obsessed with, I don't think I was ever obsessed with anything more than 'Flowers in the Attic,' which I read 13 times between fourth grade and senior year.

We have a rule: if you're killing off a series regular, you have to tell them first. If you're killing off a person temporarily, you have to warn them before the script comes out.

I've learned that I've just barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the profession, and I have deep envy of and appreciation for filmmakers who really, truly understand the physics, the design of filmmaking. They can do story and color and composition and geometry and math and science all at once.

I'm not a morning person, and yet production is a morning person's game.