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Can't write worrying what the Internet's going to think.
Marti Noxon
I think the science around mental illness is always evolving. There's always new kinds of thinking.
It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.
We did have 'The Bronze', a very active website on 'Buffy' where we got a lot of feedback and post-game discussion. But now it's important to be engaged in the discussion while the show is airing and right after.
The truth is there's a difference between the competition shows where you're testing skills and the type of shows where you're trying to create drama.
Ever since I worked on 'Buffy', it's always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, 'Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It's gone to YA.'
That went on for a long time: telling various tales from my experience being anorexic and bulimic, and having people say, 'You've got to write this; you are a writer', and me not knowing how to approach the material.
There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'
I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.
Like everbody, I'm addicted to 'The Handmaid's Tale.'
The best feeling you can ever have when you're working on a show is that the characters are still inside you, and they have a lot left to do.
When you're allowed to tell stories with ambiguity and darkness and things that are still unresolved, that's the dream scenario as opposed to having to fit into a more procedural mode or something a little more conventional. That's not what's working on TV right now.
My dad had made a documentary called 'The Dream Factory' about MGM, and my whole life, I just wanted to be inside it. And there I was.
I think there's a good-er divorce. I think that's absolutely possible. There's a better way to do it and everything in between, and then, of course, there's the disastrous way to do it.
The thing that can happen in a TV room is you can get 'teamthink': you can all go down a crazy path together.
I'm lucky to be alive. It's a blessing to tell my story, you know.
I spent some time in Vegas when I was doing some canvassing for Obama back in 2008.
That's a big part of the process: making the right choice from the beginning. Not getting distracted by shiny things.
I think women can relate to the feeling that we're internalizing too many demands, and we're trying to be good at everything, but one day, we're going to snap.
For me, the interesting thing about anorexia is that you show your wound. There's no hiding it. So my anger and sense of disappointment, all the stuff I was out of touch with, became this visible rebuke to my parents.
Test audiences are notorious for getting kind of itchy when people talk too much, and you have to trust your instincts that they don't necessarily understand that you're not digesting the movie on a scene-by-scene basis.
'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' not only applies to the deeply personal subject matter of 'To the Bone' but to simply getting a film about people with eating disorders made. Without the brilliant Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Karina Miller producing, there's no way this project would be coming to fruition.
Too many people will die needlessly if we go back to letting people buy junk insurance or insurance that doesn't help people with diseases related to mental illness.
I'm such a type A doer myself that if someone said I had a month off, I think I'd go crazy and try to organize the vacation resort!
Being the director - way fancier than 'just' being the writer. People call you 'talent.'
I really understand that we have to be sensitive to people's feelings and to their sensitivities, but you also can't be muzzled to tell a story.
I've been looking for a versatile and writer-driven home that could help me bring more complex, exciting, and potentially murderous characters to television - and the team at Skydance is the ideal partner for that.
I bemoaned the pending loss of Obamacare/the Affordable Care Act.
When I was going to get ready to take 'Dietland' up, I have to say I was surprised to find that I felt like maybe we wouldn't find a home for it because it's unlike anything else that I've done.
I did, of course, do research about what the current state of affairs is in terms of the eating disorder community and who's being affected, and I was surprised to see that - something that was - way back when I was in the thick of it, it was typified as a fairly white, middle-class girl problem. And if it was, it really isn't anymore.
Keanu has such generosity and intelligence, not to mention a warmth that I'm eager to tap into. We're all incredibly excited that he's agreed to help us bring 'To the Bone' to life.
The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.
It's funny: I've joked that 'Sharp Objects', 'To the Bone', and 'Dietland' are my self-harm trilogy, and each one is a different side of that triangle, with 'Dietland' really about fighting back.
I was raised by a lesbian feminist who told me that shaving my legs was giving into the patriarchy. So, I consider myself to be a bona fide feminist.
I'm a big believer in 'Trojan horses' - There are certain themes that are more palatable when wrapped in something fun or distracting.
I love characters who are really dedicated to a really bad plan.
The reason I fell in love with Buffy was because of the ambiguity, because she was a superhero and a hot mess. I hadn't seen anything like her on TV - ever.
I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.
Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over again until it doesn't make sense anymore. Like, you say it until you don't know what you're saying.
Scenes on phones are really boring!
I encourage people and their different points of view.
I think I've also grown a little bit in that I'm not so easily dissuaded if I really believe something.
Sometimes when I'm reading a script, I can't quite believe that this is going on television alongside cereal commercials.
There's no shape or body type that makes you more happy or more lovable. It's the body you're comfortable in that makes you happier and more lovable. I look around and see how women and men of all types find the love and the life they want.
Not proud. But I watched 'The Bachelor' only once, and I really felt, after that experience, that I could never do it again. I felt it was so morally compromising, as a woman.
You really can't quantify what 'Dietland' is.
Seeing Donald Trump run for and then win the presidency only enhanced my commitment to helping people free themselves from ridiculous body standards and disordered eating so they can use their gifts for more fulfilling things, like being of service and enjoying this beautiful world.
There're been sort of a sea change in my work in general, in that the more personal, the universal it's become.
The problem with generalizations and judgments, the words we hurl as insults, is that they deny our humanity and our stories.
You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.
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