Vince Gilligan Quotations

The thing that intrigued me about 'Breaking Bad' from day one was the idea of taking a character and transforming him.

'SpongeBob SquarePants' is a great show, and it centers on a character that is courageously nice. Why is SpongeBob interesting? It's because he has passion. He has a passion for chasing jellyfish.

You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.

People want what they want, for as long as they want it, then tastes change and something else works.

The older I get, the more nervous and anxiety-ridden I get. I don't know how to fix that.

There's nothing more powerful to a showrunner than a truly invested writer.

There are two ways of knowing if something ends badly: If you're honest with yourself, you just kind of know it. And then there's other people's reaction to it.

If you look closely at 'Breaking Bad' and any given episode of 'The X Files,' you will realise the structure is exactly the same.

In all honesty, I've written movies that have been made, and the process has not been as satisfying as writing for television.

TV is where writers get to tell interesting stories. Because writers, for the most part, run television.

Endings are the hardest part. I find there's a great relief that at the end of every episode, every hour of TV you produce, while you want a proper and satisfying ending, it doesn't have to end The Story, in capital letters.

I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.

I've imparted that philosophy to the writers, but some of them look stuff up while some don't. Same with the editors, directors and actors. To each their own.

What's so great about making television is that it's a collaborative beast. It's created by a great many hands belonging to a great many people.

[Making meth] is a complex process. The truth of it is that we live in a post-Google world where you can find six recipes for meth in 30 seconds on a search engine.

The last thing in the world that I would want to know, in my own life, is when I'm going to pass away.

It's often the case with successful TV shows that they kind of inadvertently live on past their prime. It's best to leave the audience wanting more.

Having certain limits - not too many, but certain limits on an ability to tell a story - makes us work harder, me and my writers. Sometimes I watch a giant movie with a $250 million budget and I think they feel kind of bloated, and that if they'd been leaner and meaner they might've had better storytelling.

It's like that old expression: "Men plan and god laughs." You sort of see that in the television world, where you have an idea where things are heading and you have a plan and sort of start off in that general direction, but you wind up taking all these side paths and whatnot - if you're lucky.

I'm not a big internet guy - not because I'm not interested in what people have to say, but probably because I'm too interested.

I love cable, but not because you can show boobies and say the F-word. I love it because you have more time to think. That's the blessing of it.

I stay away from the internet as much as I can. Except for pornography.

I think that for me, as far as audience expectations and how you manage your anxiety, it helps to keep things in perspective.

If you’re too rigid in your thinking you may miss some wonderful opportunities for storytelling.

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'

I wanna keep being productive and creative.

It's weird how with a TV show, you don't have just the one ending - you have the many.

Let the audience put 2 and 2 together so that it comes up with 4. Let them do that themselves, and they'll love you forever.

Television is a great job for a writer in the way that movies used to be, way before my time. Back when writers in Hollywood were on staff or under contract at any given studio and you'd write movie scripts and then the movies would get made within a few weeks, such that you could be a working writer in the movie business back in the '30s and '40s and '50s and have a hand in writing five or six movies a year that actually got produced. The only thing remotely like that in the 21st century here in Hollywood is working in the TV business.