"Somebody at one point said something about the fact that I’ve ended up with, or have chosen, these roles where it’s me. . . not necessarily against, but rivalling these [male] characters: the triptych of Mulder, Hannibal and Spector [the killer from The Fall]. That I find myself in those situations, those roles. I mean, Mulder’s not really a predator, we’re not in that dance, but there’s tension. Various forms of both intellectual and sexual tension."

"The Gothic tradition concerns things lurking in the beyond and monsters that often represent ourselves. It’s traditionally looked at how big institutions like the church and state are in fact fundamentally corrupt. That idea of the evil within is a very X-Files thing. Both Gothic literature and The X-Files are about taking that walk into the dark woods and facing what we can’t define. That’s essentially what Mulder does in the show."

"It's a curious time to be doing the show because everything is upside-down. There's been a flip since we were first on the air. Now it's as though people don't trust science anymore. In fact, they don't trust anything! Although they do believe in something: They believe in conspiracy theories, more than ever, it seems."

"There is a lot of soul there. But, you know, I do think there's also something to the fact that we kind of flip-flopped the gender roles early on, before it was ‘smart,’ or whatever, to do. Mulder was kind of this guy being instinctual, emotional, irrational, while Gillian—Scully—was rational and stoic. At least in TV terms, I think that was revolutionary, and it strengthened our performances because it was something Gillian and I could both sink our teeth into."

"The frame of The X-Files, which started out as a pretty much straight-ahead thriller/mystery/horror genre science-fiction show, kind of started to mold and get more flexible as writers like Glen Morgan and James Wong and then Vince [Gilligan] and then Darin Morgan took it into a more comedic area, sometimes into a more horror area. And the show started to bend and it never broke, and I think that's a testament to the vision that [showrunner Chris Carter] had in the beginning, which I don't think he had consciously. But he created a show that could bend and could grow, and he had the luck or the foresight to hire writers that were going to take his baby and turn it into something else from time to time."