Cinema and emotion trump reality for me.

It's such a surreal experience, being shot out of the cannon for any kind of first season show. It all seems very dreamlike.

There's usually a few people who are like, "Say... what would that look like on our channel?" Interest can be expressed without directly expressing interest.

Everything was so designed by Hannibal to break down Will in the first season, until Will's sanity became questionable. It's so much easier to believe that somebody losing their mind is capable of terrible things than it is to consider Frasier Crane, a charming, fun doctor who invites you to dinner. If you put those two in a police lineup, you're going to pick the guy who's melting down.

We often do to people what people are very comfortable with doing to animals without a second thought.

It would be pathological narcissism to assume that that person had to live how I live.

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."