When you do 22 episodes of a network show, it's incredibly useful to have a format that gives you a jumping-off point for a story.

Kids aint supposed to be grateful! They're supposed to eat your food, break your heart.

It's hard asking someone with a broken heart to fall in love again.

I've had a lifelong obsession with urban legends and American folklore.

Television showrunners are a foolishly optimistic bunch.

Beyond all our Blackberries and iPhones, we're dangerously separated from our food and water supplies.

We are definitely living in the butterfly effect theory, where any change that is made in the past is going to have a very logical cause-and-effect ramification of the present.

I've always said at the beginning of every single season of the show when I was running the show in the writers' room, "This is the last season, so let's smoke 'em if we've got 'em."

When I am kicking around show ideas, or really any idea, usually an image comes to me. I don't really start with a character or a logline like, "What if the electricity turned off?"

Your half-caff double vanilla latte is getting cold over here, Francis.

People simply don't make eye contact anymore.

Things yet unknown will change the way you think.

In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.

WE MUST ALL EAT OR ELSE WE WILL PUT SAND IN YOUR FOOD.

It's important to travel and move and have a continual set of experiences so you've got more to feed back into your work. For me, it's a natural thing.

My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of time when I've been going through a personal nightmare.

Authenticity is your most precious commodity as a leader.

I'm a positive thinker and actor. I look at a glass; a negative person sees the glass and says: too bad it's half empty... I look at the same glass and say: Hallelujah!! It's half full!!!

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.

I trained myself to be organized.

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.