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.

I suffer mightily at the 7 A.M. calls. I'm happy as a clam on the 7 P.M. calls.

I think the model of The CW Network is really built on the fan platform more than anything else. The success or longevity of a series has less to do with the number it's pulling and more to do with the social footprint... There is a lot about the fan support on a strictly business level that's really powerful for that network.

Write something good that the people like.

I don't pray. I'm not a deeply religious person.

I thought, 'Oh, I'll be an independent producer. Oh, I'll be a manager.' I was going through all those things in my head, and one night, late at night, I was having what I would now describe as probably a panic attack because there were so many unknowns. An almost literal voice came into my head telling me, 'You need to write.'

If you write a good line, you write a good line, and the best line wins in television. It doesn't matter if you're the guy who gets the coffee or if you're the showrunner - best line wins. That's the beauty of television collaboration.

If people love 'TVD' in 20 years the way they still love 'Buffy' today - on its 20th anniversary - I will be happy.

I've always been a super-fan of television storytelling. It took me a while to figure that out in a career capacity, but certainly in a life capacity, I've been an avid viewer of television for decades.

It took me some time to realize television, for someone like me, was the perfect medium. I like to produce, I like to be detail-orientated, I like to be in charge of a lot of things, and I like to be a storyteller. It's kind of the perfect gig for someone like me.

It was a high-class problem burden, but it was still a burden on 'The Vampire Diaries,' in which we had this group of characters that we loved writing for so much and who had so much available story to tell.

I remember just weeping my way through the 'Friday Night Lights' finale with my best friend and just being so happy all the way through because it was so beautiful.

The joke of being a showrunner is that people ask how you get it all done, and you don't. The list of things I don't get done in a given day is longer than the list of things I do. And one of the things that's first to go is watching dailies.

The people I worked for before I was doing 'Vampire Diaries' were very generous to me.

There's something about two people coming together in the rain that is the ultimate expression of love in the minds of most audiences, I guess.

What's funny is, I was always certain that I couldn't be a director because there are things about the physics of camera and lighting that I fundamentally cannot wrap my head around.

When you're the showrunner, you're the person that's in control of most of the details, and to be able to take all that and then to step right behind the camera and to have a direct line of communication with the crew and with the actors - to not be delivering that through another person - is pretty freeing and extremely stimulating.

There's something about a supernatural universe that you would think would actually make it easier to create tension and build conflict and have big scares and big ideas and big sequences. And that's true in a lot of ways. You can pick the best idea out of a hat.

In a non-supernatural universe, there's just character, and it's humanity and human beings and how they relate to each other.

Don't do another show just because someone thinks that there's a dollar to be earned there. Do it because you love the characters, and you love the world, and you really, truly feel both the fans and you as a storyteller can benefit from having the second show.

I grew up as an avid reader. I would go to the library and check out 40 books a week. Some of them were smarty books; most of them were 'Sweet Valley High' and young teen romance.

You're supposed to be writing from experience - experience with people, with reading, seeing some homeless guy on the street and making up some story of him in your head. If you never see any of that or have those conversations or even sleep enough to have vivid dreams, then what are you writing about?

I don't like villains who are just villains. People who are just there to be bad - ugh - so annoying.

Actors have their own processes, and if you want to be respectful of their process, you've got to communicate with them in the language of their process, and keeping that all straight is a little bit of a head-scratcher.

I do all these panels where people are always talking about the lack of female directors, and I have a lot of opinions on that.