I'll be honest: I had a real deep-seated fear that 'Buffy' was going to be my peak. It was such a beautiful experience. It was such a fully realized show.

I've never had as much success as when I say to myself, 'I get that. I know what the feelings that that character would be going through would be like. I can feel a through line from beginning to end.'

It's so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them 'un-gay' again. Like, once you become gay, you've crossed over, or you're not allowed to be a person who doesn't want to be defined by a label like that.

I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.

A great thing, which I don't do enough, is to take a break from producing and try to just take stuff in, like go to the theater.

Of all the mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest morbidity rate. It's serious.

Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over again until it doesn't make sense anymore. Like, you say it until you don't know what you're saying.

It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.

We did have 'The Bronze', a very active website on 'Buffy' where we got a lot of feedback and post-game discussion. But now it's important to be engaged in the discussion while the show is airing and right after.

I think there's a good-er divorce. I think that's absolutely possible. There's a better way to do it and everything in between, and then, of course, there's the disastrous way to do it.

I'm a big believer in 'Trojan horses' - There are certain themes that are more palatable when wrapped in something fun or distracting.

I think the science around mental illness is always evolving. There's always new kinds of thinking.

I think women can relate to the feeling that we're internalizing too many demands, and we're trying to be good at everything, but one day, we're going to snap.

I really understand that we have to be sensitive to people's feelings and to their sensitivities, but you also can't be muzzled to tell a story.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

It's humiliating, being told you're not responsible enough to make your own choices in life.

When I was going to get ready to take 'Dietland' up, I have to say I was surprised to find that I felt like maybe we wouldn't find a home for it because it's unlike anything else that I've done.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

You should live hoping you are going to offend people, because then you're doing something.

It all starts with a very solid, well-executed script, where the story is very clear and everybody is rowing in the same direction. That's always good; that's a constant.

In 'UnREAL', for me, just being so openly feminist, just being so overtly, like, 'This show is about women who are not necessarily likable, doing a job that is despicable, and we are not going to be afraid of that.'

A show can be completely dead before you even get on the air. I've been privy to a couple of those.

I've been looking for a versatile and writer-driven home that could help me bring more complex, exciting, and potentially murderous characters to television - and the team at Skydance is the ideal partner for that.

I'm so excited to be part of the environment that David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross have built at Skydance.

The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.

My dad had made a documentary called 'The Dream Factory' about MGM, and my whole life, I just wanted to be inside it. And there I was.

If you made a movie of 'Sharp Objects,' chances are that it would be a smaller film, but as a TV show, it can reach a lot of people.

I encourage people and their different points of view.

I think I've also grown a little bit in that I'm not so easily dissuaded if I really believe something.

There're been sort of a sea change in my work in general, in that the more personal, the universal it's become.

'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' not only applies to the deeply personal subject matter of 'To the Bone' but to simply getting a film about people with eating disorders made. Without the brilliant Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Karina Miller producing, there's no way this project would be coming to fruition.

One of the good things about consulting is that you leave the writers' room for a couple of days, things progress, you come back, and you might have a fresher take.

It's funny: I've joked that 'Sharp Objects,' 'To the Bone,' and 'Dietland' are my self-harm trilogy, and each one is a different side of that triangle, with 'Dietland' really about fighting back.

The reason I fell in love with Buffy was because of the ambiguity, because she was a superhero and a hot mess. I hadn't seen anything like her on TV - ever.

When you're allowed to tell stories with ambiguity and darkness and things that are still unresolved, that's the dream scenario as opposed to having to fit into a more procedural mode or something a little more conventional. That's not what's working on TV right now.

I spent some time in Vegas when I was doing some canvassing for Obama back in 2008.

On 'Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce,' we have a mandate to hire as many women as possible, but particularly on a show that is about women and about progressive issues like that.

I did, of course, do research about what the current state of affairs is in terms of the eating disorder community and who's being affected, and I was surprised to see that - something that was - way back when I was in the thick of it, it was typified as a fairly white, middle-class girl problem. And if it was, it really isn't anymore.

Like everbody, I'm addicted to 'The Handmaid's Tale.'

That's a big part of the process: making the right choice from the beginning. Not getting distracted by shiny things.

I realized all the writing I love lives in the gray area.

That went on for a long time: telling various tales from my experience being anorexic and bulimic, and having people say, 'You've got to write this; you are a writer,' and me not knowing how to approach the material.

So many of the indie movies that get made are not about topics that touch millions and millions of people.

I think many people expend a tremendous amount of energy on self-loathing and self-flagellation as well as getting caught in a vicious cycle of dieting and gaining the weight back.

Seeing Donald Trump run for and then win the presidency only enhanced my commitment to helping people free themselves from ridiculous body standards and disordered eating so they can use their gifts for more fulfilling things, like being of service and enjoying this beautiful world.

For me, the interesting thing about anorexia is that you show your wound. There's no hiding it. So my anger and sense of disappointment, all the stuff I was out of touch with, became this visible rebuke to my parents.

Sometimes when I'm reading a script, I can't quite believe that this is going on television alongside cereal commercials.

Being an aging woman in Hollywood is no picnic.

I digested this value system that told me there was no one for me unless I reached a certain type of perfection. And as you get older, you realize that ideal is constantly changing.

There's no shape or body type that makes you more happy or more lovable. It's the body you're comfortable in that makes you happier and more lovable. I look around and see how women and men of all types find the love and the life they want.