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

We only really, deeply consider what our life is when we're faced with mortality on some level.

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.

It's very interesting to blur the line between eating human beings and eating animals, because I do think people should think more about what they put in their bodies, whether it is nutritionally or philosophically.

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.

In junior high I read a lot of Stephen King, whose Americana approach to writing was often about "the terror next door" and at the same time I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, who was on the other end of the horror pendulum: insidious and disturbingly psychological. I found it fascinating how these two authors came at horror from two totally different perspectives.

I've never been one of those who is attracted to straight men. Like I always said, 'you're straight, so there's no point' and I have friends who are pursuers of the heterosexual men. They see it as conquests, which I think is a different thing and a more narcissistic thing. And not necessarily a healthy thing.