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.

If I were to remake a movie, I'd love to remake Halloween 3 Season of the Witch because even though it's a very flawed film, at its core is a brilliant idea: An evil toymaker is set to kill all the children of the world on Halloween night - and I think that's absolutely fantastic. So whoever has the rights can give me a call.

I went to school to be a psychiatrist. That's where I was going until I had a teacher-student conference with one of my teachers and there were film school pamphlets, and he said, "You don't belong here. Get out. Go to film school."

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

Hannibal is very much a secular story, even though we dance right up to the supernatural a few times in the show, and, arguably, you could say we dipped our toe in an instance or two.

You are what you worship. There's something so true about that, with how we're operating as a culture in America. People believing in a wide variety of things, and rarely believing in the same thing. It gives us an opportunity to have a conversation: What is faith? What is belief? What is your personal responsibility for how you see yourself in the grander scheme of the universe, and life, and your contribution to it?