Carlton Cuse

“The creative process is not like a situation where you get struck by a single lightning bolt. You have ongoing discoveries, and there's ongoing creative revelations. Yes, it's really helpful to be marching toward a specific destination, but, along the way, you must allow yourself room for your ideas to blossom, take root, and grow.”

“One of the things that's, I think, hard in television is that there's a certain sameness to a lot of television because you're working in a very constricted box, and the box is defined by the amount of money you have to spend and the amount of time you have to get ready.”

“I think there's this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. Everyone is like, 'I want to unlock the single secret to 'Lost.' There isn't any one secret. There is not a unified field theory for 'Lost,' nor do we think there should be, because philosophically, we don't buy into that as a conceit.”

“I feel like if you enjoyed the 119 hours that precede the finale of 'Lost,' is that whole experience ruined by the fact that you might not agree with everything that we did in the finale? I would hope not! I would hope that you would appreciate the fact that you were entertained for 119 hours even if you didn't love the finale.”

“I think 'Lost' was really a pioneer in the use of the kind of connection between a television show and the Internet, and the Internet really gave fans an opportunity to create a community around the show. That was something that wasn't really planned; it just sort of grew up in the wake of the show.”

“We feel like 'Lost' deserved a real resolution, not a 'snow globe, waking up in bed, it's all been a dream, cut to black' kind of ending. We thought that would be kind of a betrayal to an audience that's been on this journey for six years. We thought that was not the right ending for our show.”

“Tragedy is a great storytelling form. It worked extremely well for Shakespeare. It worked extremely well for Jim Cameron with 'Titanic.'”

“In Hollywood, there is no bigger commitment you can make than to a TV series. Even marriages pale in comparison. Marriages don't require signing iron-clad multiyear contracts. At least, most first marriages don't.”

“I think movie and television companies are in the business of making money, and if you have a franchise, eventually you'll want to exploit that franchise and revisit it. So I assume at some point someone will do another story in the 'Lost' world.”

“I really think that as good of a job as you do as a writer, you're absolutely indebted to the actors that have to deliver that material.”

“The most difficult story that I've ever been involved in breaking on any of my shows was 'The Constant' episode of 'Lost,' which was when Desmond was consciousness-traveling.”

“If you go to a movie and it's a great experience, the experience at the end of it is always like this sadness that it's over, that your time with these characters is finished. There's almost like an achy feeling that I have when I go to a movie that I love and it ends.”

“As we began working toward the finale of 'Lost,' I knew there was no possible ending that was going to be universally loved, and I accepted that. We ended the story the way we wanted it to end, and we stand by it. On my Twitter feed, I still get ten to fifteen positive comments for every negative one.”

“Ironically, I wouldn't say I'm a massive horror fan. I love thrillers.”

“As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.”

“Television used to be made much more in a vacuum; the only feedback the audience had for a long time was in a Nielsen number that would arrive sometime after the show had been broadcast. And now, people are just completely engaged on so many levels, and I think that you have to find a way as a show creator to follow your own compass.”

“'Lost' is about a bunch of people stranded on an island. It's compelling, but kind of tiny. But what sustains you are the characters.”

“When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.”

“I can't say that the ending of a story is always the best part of the story, and yet there's sort of this implicit idea that the finale is somehow supposed to be the mind-blowing best episode of a show. The question is: Why is that? Why do people make that assumption?”