Top 66 Julie Plec Quotes

Growing up, I remember watching ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and ‘L.A. Law’ and being so obsessed with it.

Actors have their own processes, and if you want to be respectful of their process, you’ve got to communicate with them in the language of their process, and keeping that all straight is a little bit of a head-scratcher.

I think, make it as beautiful as you can, and then rip it away. That’s my sadistic thought as a storyteller.

TV writing – for me, at least – is half original voice and half an embodiment and a representation of the spirit of the actors you’re writing for.

If the day-to-day culture is saying it’s OK to not be inclusive or tolerant, that it’s OK to be bigoted, then it’s your responsibility to double down and make it OK in storytelling to be inclusive and tolerant.

I think Joss Whedon is a genius.

I can stay up until the sun’s up, no problem, but I do not like getting up in the morning.

I love real women that don’t have to be saints, who can be selfish and act out against their parents or like the wrong guy, because that’s life. That’s my life, at least.

It was a high-class problem burden, but it was still a burden on ‘The Vampire Diaries,’ in which we had this group of characters that we loved writing for so much and who had so much available story to tell.

To me, TV relationships work at their best when there is a deep longing and feelings and interest and sexual attraction that is unrequitable.

It doesn’t matter if these characters are supposed to be together forever: if their chemistry gets stale, you want somebody to die, you want to put somebody in a coma, you want to write them off the show – anything to save you.

There’s something about a supernatural universe that you would think would actually make it easier to create tension and build conflict and have big scares and big ideas and big sequences. And that’s true in a lot of ways. You can pick the best idea out of a hat.

I don’t pray. I’m not a deeply religious person.

The whole reason I like these virus movies is because I read ‘The Stand’ when I was in junior high and thought it was the greatest book I’d ever read.

I wanted people to talk about the finale of ‘The Vampire Diaries’ as one of their favorites, which is a lofty ambition, but it certainly drove me hard creatively to make sure that we had put as much thought and love into it as we possibly could.

There’s a lot of storylines over the years where you feel like it’s maybe meant to be more important than it ends up being, and that’s because we jump ship, and you gracefully extricate yourself from that as well as you can.

‘The Reckoning’ is one of my proudest hours. I love that episode so much.

The one thing that always drove me crazy, especially on soaps, was when someone would have something they were hiding, and then six months later, they were still holding onto that secret, and the world has come to a complete, total end as a result of it. If they’d only just confessed!

I suffer mightily at the 7 A.M. calls. I’m happy as a clam on the 7 P.M. calls.

In a non-supernatural universe, there’s just character, and it’s humanity and human beings and how they relate to each other.

If you write a good line, you write a good line, and the best line wins in television. It doesn’t matter if you’re the guy who gets the coffee or if you’re the showrunner – best line wins. That’s the beauty of television collaboration.

I learned that getting a movie made in Hollywood is a near impossibility, and the process can be a wild adventure. TV is a lot more consistently productive – no offense to the beautiful world of feature film.

Hollywood, Twitter, our friends – they all contribute to a community of snark. The more we engage in the way that everyone else engages, the more followers, likes, and RTs we get. But we can’t rail against the cyberbullies without acknowledging what we also contribute to a culture of cruelty.

Don’t do another show just because someone thinks that there’s a dollar to be earned there. Do it because you love the characters, and you love the world, and you really, truly feel both the fans and you as a storyteller can benefit from having the second show.

I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.

Kevin Williamson and I wrote a show about loss and grief that just so happened to have vampires in it.

The funny thing about the entertainment business is that we all feel like kids playing in a candy store, but we are entrusted with millions and millions and millions of dollars and an entire industry that can thrive or die on whether or not we do our jobs well or not.

I read ‘Tiger Beat’ and ‘Bop’ from the time I was 9, 10, 11 years old. I loved movies. I saw ‘E.T.’ seven times. I used to yell at people who called me when ‘L.A. Law’ was on because they should know better. So I just have been so in love with the business of Hollywood since I can remember.

There is no definitive end to anybody’s story when you’re dealing with the fluidity of chemistry, because when it gets stale, you want out.

There’s a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

‘Ghost World’ was such an incredibly difficult episode to find the right tone for. I remember at the time it was very divisive because some people hated it – they thought it was cheesy and hokey – and I loved it. When I saw it, I cried my head off, and I was so happy.

I do all these panels where people are always talking about the lack of female directors, and I have a lot of opinions on that.

The people I worked for before I was doing ‘Vampire Diaries’ were very generous to me.

I grew up as an avid reader. I would go to the library and check out 40 books a week. Some of them were smarty books; most of them were ‘Sweet Valley High’ and young teen romance.

If I walk into the editing room, it’s six hours lost. I’m massaging frames. I’m, like, ‘Oh, take six frames off that shot. Hit the music cue right there.’ I will drive everybody crazy if left to my own devices in that room. So I try to do everything I can by staying out of the way.

Cynicism doesn’t have its way in series finales. My emotional desire when I watch a series come to an end is to be crying and laughing and cheering as the final credits roll, feeling like I just got delivered the happy ending, whether the plot ends happily or not.

When you have to spread heroism across too many players, you don’t get to really dig deep into each of them as much as you’d want to.

I used to sneak ‘General Hospital’ when I was a kid. My cousin was my babysitter, and she watched it, so I got hooked on it. I wasn’t supposed to be watching it, but I was so obsessed with it that I’d find ways, even as an 8-year-old, to get into that.

I look at ‘Friday Night Lights’ as one of my all-time favorite series finales, and that is what you want. After all the roads you’ve traveled with these people, you just want to know that they’re going to be happy. I’m a big believer in shows that make that choice.

The problem with ratings is that you can give yourself a million reasons why they are what they are.

When you’re dealing with long-distance relationships, it’s a relationship played out over technology. When you’re in high school, it’s because you’re not supposed to act on those impulses yet. So some of my favorite relationships in drama are based in people that can’t really be together.

What’s funny is, I was always certain that I couldn’t be a director because there are things about the physics of camera and lighting that I fundamentally cannot wrap my head around.

Showrunning is an arrogant job. You have to be arrogant and hold yourself strong in order for people to hear you. Confidence partners with arrogance. The only person you have to trust is yourself. The only instinct you can trust is your own.

Happiness is not necessarily a drama magnet.

If people love ‘TVD’ in 20 years the way they still love ‘Buffy’ today – on its 20th anniversary – I will be happy.

I call it ‘The Breakfast Club’ philosophy. There’s something about being trapped in a dire situation with a group of people that you would never normally be trapped with.

Humanity has both its beautiful and its ugly sides.

The intensity of the story breaking on ‘Vampire’ has never been easy. Every week, you’re starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There’s no formula; there’s no franchise to hang your hat on.

Fans are always talking about endgame as though endgame has been chosen from minute 1. I don’t know that you could talk to a single series creator that would say confidently ‘Where I started is where I finished, and there was no way in hell I was going to stray from that path.’ ‘Dawson’s’ being the perfect example.

When you have an ensemble where characters pair off so easily, it becomes extremely isolating in the story world. You can end up with two actors who have not seen each other face to face all season long.

As you live your life and accumulate friends, both IRL and on social media, ask yourself, are you a bully too?

God bless Hollywood and all that it stands for, but, you know, people tend to peak in their 40s, and then it’s all downhill from there.

Daily, I visualize the smart-ass troll who lives deep in my subconscious, and I pelt him with rainbows and unicorns. I fight a battle against my judgmental thoughts. And when an opportunity arises to gain acceptance or popularity at the expense of someone else, I zip it. It’s not easy.