Our idea for Hannibal Lecter is that he's very reactionary - he's somebody who can adapt really well to circumstances.

Food is life. Food is also very sensual, and in Pushing Daisies, pie being reflective of life and a man who was disconnected from the living but could bring the dead back to life being a pie maker felt like I got the symbolism of food as life.

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.

Cinema and emotion trump reality for me.

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 think you have to write what you want to watch.

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