One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

I'm not always successful, but I take my job as a storyteller very seriously and want to make sure the audience has as much fun watching it as I am creating it.

If you see the blood, then there's an easy association of the violence. The violence that happens when there isn't blood is actually much more subversive and unsettling.

For Hannibal, it's really about food as art and also, Hannibal's specific brand of art. And I guess I'm a bit of a foodie.

I love the supernatural in storytelling. The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on me, in terms of writing and storytelling, where you're not restricted to the parameters of reality to tell your tale.

I think if you are writing something that you are trying to design for someone else to like that is not necessarily you're demographic, it is a much harder road.

The idea of suggesting that Hannibal Lecter - in the book, he has a sixth finger and red eyes, and so there is a devilry in Thomas Harris' presentation - so it felt like it was completely honest and appropriate for the character. And we often talk in the writers' room, "Okay, there is the Hannibal as the devil explanation of that plot point, but we also need to ground that in a reality that is answerable to the physics of the storytelling."