I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.

I think it's not inaccurate to say that I had a perfectly happy childhood during which I was very unhappy.

My favorite part of Comic-Con? The groupies.

What I do like is hiking. And that's what filmmaking is. It's a hike. It's challenging and exhausting, and you don't know what the terrain is going to be or necessarily even which direction you're going in... but it sure is beautiful.

I've been to two festivals in my life, and I've never been to Toronto. I haven't really been making festival movies. This is new territory for me.

Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.

I've never met a well-adjusted person. It's weird.

I spent a ton of time alone. I was raised by a feminist; I had a terrifying father and oppressively scary and mean brothers. We had a farm. The rule was between breakfast and lunch you weren't allowed to make a sound.

I don't want the giant ego. I don't want to become Kevin Costner, singing on the soundtrack to The Postman.

Making 'The Avengers' was very important to me, but it was also extremely arduous. I missed my friends and I missed my home, so I decided to throw them all on camera, which is the only way I seem to know to relate to people.

There are two things that I cannot resist: one is musicals and the other is a spaceship in trouble. But I am smart enough not to combine the two things.

Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.

I get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can't go places.

My deal with Marvel is I have a consulting deal with them as well as a contract to make 'Avengers.' That means I'll read all the scripts, I'll look at cuts.

I can do web, comic books, macrame, art.

People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.

I designed 'Buffy' to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult.

I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.

People always say I write a lot of pop culture references. Can somebody please count the pop culture references in 'Firefly?' Because I don't know how to put this to you, but there was one. I referenced The Beatles in the pilot.

I always was an early-morning or late-night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning, you make up some of your most absurd jokes.

A lot of people who saw 'The Avengers' didn't read comic books, don't like comic book movies, and enjoyed it. That was huge for me.

TV's like whitewater rafting: Without rocks, there wouldn't be rapids, and it wouldn't be as much fun.

The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.

The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes.

I'm not big on regret; I don't spend a lot of time on it.

My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.

I have abused language. I love it, and I abuse it... I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register.

I tend to tell stories that have a lot of momentum; it's not like 'and then months later...' I like things where the momentum of one action rolls into the next one so everything is the sum of that.

Running a TV show is always running a TV show; it's never not running a TV show.

What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh.

I would love to give you a more in-depth coherent explanation of my view of the soul, and if I had one I would. The soul and my concept of it are as ephemeral as anybody's, and possibly more so.

On one level, I must never lose touch with my audience. But I must, at some point, stop trying to get everybody to like me, and be true to the thing I think I need to say.

I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They pretty much told me the end of everything they got to see before I did.

What I love most about icons is finding out what's behind them, exploring the price of their power.

I loved working with 'The Avengers' cast and we had a great time, but it was a job, and they had other commitments during that job, so they would go off and do other things.

Buffy loves Angel. He loves her. And I love Ho Hos.

Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in.

I don't have a particular ambition in any medium. I just want to keep telling stories. If somebody pays me, also good.

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?'

If somebody comes up to me, it's because they're moved by something I'm moved by. I've never taken a job I didn't love... So when somebody's coming up to me, or they're writing, they're in the same space I am in.

Oddly enough, I never studied writing. I studied almost everything except writing.

That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said 'But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously,' and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.

You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed.

When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.

I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium.

The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don't have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead.

Horror movies don't exist unless you go and see them, and people always will.

The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it.

Kristen Stewart is kind of captivating; she can just stare at stuff and it works because I still want to watch it.

I am a great believer in found families and I'm not a great believer in blood.