Eric Kripke Quotations

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

People love a good mystery; I understand that.

I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.

Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole - it's about human connections.

When you start a show, the plans are not set in stone. They're really mutable, cocktail napkin sketches.

People pitch me the crazy mystery mind-blowing thing all the time. My response is, 'Great, but how do the characters feel about it, and how do we reveal new facets and new dimensions of who they are?

I like to tell stories that have beginnings, middles and ends.

If I had a worldview, and I don’t know if I do, but if I did, it’s one that’s intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole, it’s about human connections.

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

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

Mythologies become exhausting burdens, from a writer's perspective.

Every so often, you want to map out your plot mythology but never so specifically that you can't let a story surprise you. You want to allow the type of action of the writer's room so that you have the ability to take a left turn.

I've never counted my chickens before they've hatched.

At the end of day, people are starving and, if people are starving and thirsty and they need to keep their families alive, people become desperate quickly. There are real world examples of this.

I have a bad habit, in the shows that I run, of killing off the people that I love.

I'm mostly coming at the superhero legends as an outsider, I know them and I studied them but I didn't really grow up with them, but I think it allows me to sort of analyze them in a way that's kind of interesting.

I'm kind of a comic book geek, but I'm not really a super hero comic book geek.

In TV and movies, you kill yourself spending all this time to think up the symbolism or what if that deer that runs across your hero's path somehow conveys what's going on inside your hero's head? When a lot of times, you just want to hear what he's thinking.

The ability to get inside your character's head in a graphic novel is really fun and useful because one, you can really define the character's voice and two, it's a way easier way to convey what the character's thinking by actually laying out what he's thinking.

When you're writing TV or movies your vernacular is time, it's all based on rhythms, a character takes a beat or two characters have a moment, like everything is about time. And when you're writing a comic, everything is about space. It's how many panels to put on a page, when should you do a full page splash, what is the detail that you see in any particular image.

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?"

I'm going to put out something that I believe in, or I'm not going to do it." I'm really scared of putting out a product that people will say, "Oh, that's not as good as the other thing."

It's hard to make a lot of pop culture references where there's no pop culture.

Let's be honest, any show will live or die based on how good the characters are, how good the actors are, how complicated the relationships are, how grounded they are and how much heart they have.

There are so many shows out there, so you really need to work hard to separate yourself and cut through the static.

What I think networks do so well are big, fun, accessible, invite everybody into the tent kinds of storytelling, akin to an early Spielberg movie or a Michael Crichton novel. That's not to say that there aren't scary parts 'cause there are, and that there aren't sexy parts and edgy parts, just like early Spielberg would have, but there's a lot of heart, a lot of emotion and complicated characters.

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.

We say it’s a modern American Western - two gunslingers who ride into town, fight the bad guys, kiss the girl and ride out into the sunset again. And we were always talking from the very beginning that if you’re going to have cowboys, they need a trusty horse. —Eric Kripke on the decision to add the Impala

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

You think you're funny? I think I'm adorable.

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.

Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.

It's always better to go personal and painful than to go big.

If I had a worldview, and I don't know if I do,but if I did, it's one that's intensely humanistic.

A show is going to be good and fun to work on, if the research is interesting.

I really am a very research-oriented writer.

People simply don't make eye contact anymore.

I like to find ideas where the research is going to be fun.

Television showrunners are a foolishly optimistic bunch.

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