I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up.

TV does a thing that film can never do. It takes you to a place that no novel written after the late 19th century can. You can just go through people's lives; it's like a marriage.

As far as I am concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.

I'm a very hard-line, angry atheist. Yet I am fascinated by the concept of devotion.

When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea.

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.

Everybody who labels themselves a 'nerd' isn't some giant person locked in a cubbyhole who's never seen the opposite sex. Especially with the way the Internet is now, I think that definition is getting a little more diffuse.

I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

There's not going to be a 'Buffy' season nine on television.

I do listen to music. Movie scores, exclusively, because it's all about mood and nonspecificity. I love the way modern movie scoring is all about nonspecificity. You know, if I shuffled the tracks from 'Inception,' I challenge you to tell me which is which.

I don't know a lot of show runners. I mean I met a lot of them in picket lines. I'm not part of a, like, secret society or pickup basketball game. As far as I'm concerned, pick-up basketball games are secret societies. They confuse me. I've never been a networker or I've never been very social.

I think 'Batman Begins' is certainly my favorite Batman movie I've seen.

Everything I write tends to turn into a superhero team, even if I didn't mean for it to. I always start off wanting to be solitary, because a) it's simpler, and b) that isolation is something that I relate to as a storyteller. And then no matter what, I always end up with a team.

Every time you work on a project, it's a little vacation from the project you're working on the other 23 hours. That's the thing - it replenishes you to do something else.

My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.

I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of 'women are inferior.'

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

I think it's always important for academics to study popular culture, even if the thing they are studying is idiotic. If it's successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why.

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.

You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.

It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist.

Every vampire fiction reinvents vampires to its own needs. You take what you want.

I don't believe in creating exclusionary art.

Ultimately what I end up writing about is helplessness and the flipside of that, empowerment.

You know, 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.

I am not a fan of referencing your own work when it's in a different universe than what you're doing. That, to me, is a wink at the audience, and winking isn't actually cool when you're not, like, 10.

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.

There's a lot of anger in the Twitter-verse, as I've discovered. But there's a lot of love.

In TV, there's so much compromise, it does start to grate a bit. But if you're a writer or an actor, it really is the place to be.

The networks have a particular agenda, a particular model and structure. It doesn't have anything to do with content. This is not a dis on them - they are a business model, run by business people.

Actors wait tables, directors work at video stores.

Part of making TV is the process - you just have to churn it out.

Science fiction is like a blender - you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience.

I don't think I'm a celebrity. Maybe I'm a cult figure?

A writer is supposed to have anonymity.

Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.

It's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.

I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw.

I was raised by a hardcore feminist.

Casting is storytelling.

You don't buy a Picasso because you love the frame.

I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.

Writers are completely out of touch with reality. Writers are a crazy person. We create conflict - for a living. We do this all the time, sometimes on a weekly basis; we create horrible, incredible circumstances and then figure a way out of them. That's what we do.

I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.

I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.

The people who feel the most strongly about something will turn on you the most vociferously if they feel you've let them down.

I like horror; I like comedy; I like drama; I like action; I like female heroes.

I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt.

The master plan does not have a master plan. Television ultimately finds itself, and after it finds itself, it finds itself changing.