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From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.

The goal is to have every character take on a life of his or her own. Sometimes characters will come into the story that I haven't planned.

Well, you know, I don't think anyone who writes a television series has a master plan from the beginning, and knows all the character traits, and everything that's going to happen.

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

Audiences know exactly what's coming and they know from the beginning of the movie that everything's going to be OK and there will be high jinks that will get you from the beginning to the end, and eventually all the misunderstandings will be worked out and everyone will be in love.

Each film and each character is a completely new set of challenges. It doesn't feel like you can rest on something you may have done well in the past.

When you play a character, there are choices you have to make about the past, the present, the future, etc. You have to make those choices on your own a lot.

The whole point of having great characters is the opportunity to explore them more deeply with time, re-interpreting them for each new age.

There is a comfort zone of knowing where things are going and having characters in place, but the action gets more and more dramatic and is very challenging to describe.