I certainly believe that what we perceive as humans is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t necessarily believe in vampires or werewolves or that kind of thing, but I believe there is definitely...

We live in a patriarchal culture. It’s okay for women to be objectified but not for men.

Well, here’s the thing with relationships on ‘True Blood’: Once they happen then you have to throw a monkey-wrench into them, because to have people be happy is not that exciting.

Death is a companion for all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we’re aware of it or not, and it’s not necessarily a terrible thing.

I think the world is a place for oddballs and freaks. I’m only interested in oddballs and freaks as characters.

I’m not saying that being gay is what defines me, but at the same time, if you feel like you have to hide it, then it becomes what defines you. You keep it hidden, and...

I don’t believe in any particular definition of the afterlife, but I do believe we’re spiritual creatures and more than our biology and that energy cannot be destroyed, but can change. I don’t know what...

Most of us live in artificial environments and then we go to work in artificial environments and the world becomes something that you see through a window.

I always choose to look, as much as one can, at the supernatural not being something that exists outside of nature, but a deeper, fundamental heart of nature that perhaps humans… have lost touch with....

As a writer, it’s fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it’s a really great job, but...

I’m 53. I don’t care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

I will say that the environment I grew up in was not the most progressive.

It’s hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn’t exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these...

I love to direct! I get really jazzed by directing, but directing is not the same kind of personal expression, the same kind of personal intimate expression that writing is. Because when you’re directing, you’re...

I was conveniently bisexual for a long time, and then I went, ‘Come on, who am I kidding?’ And I have to say, it was the single biggest step I took toward emotional well-being, to...

Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don’t want to watch them on TV.

Death showed up in my life very early on, so I’m aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there’s a sort of contemplation of mortality – although ‘True Blood’...

I think it’s very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.

You cannot hold a child accountable to the same standards that you hold an adult accountable to.

The difference between film and TV is the pace. You don’t have the leisure of time in television.

I need to feel like the work I’m doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get...

I’m a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, ‘Everything changes, don’t take it personally.’

I’d seen ‘Interview with A Vampire’ and saw Dracula movies growing up, but I never thought, ‘I love vampires; I have to do a show about vampires.’

I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those...

It’s easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It’s also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and...

You know, I’m gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.

Not everything is going to be successful. To strive for that is really naive. You just do the best you can do.

I really feel like my goal, and I don’t always achieve it, is to do the best work I can do, and stay out of the results. Because ultimately, the result is not what the...

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to...

I’m from the South, so while I personally find it impossible to live there, I still have a fondness for it as a geographical region.

I think all writers are armchair psychologists to some degree or another, and I think a character’s sexuality is fascinating. It’s a great way to really get at the root of their identity, because it’s...

Directing is physically exciting because there’s a ticking clock, you’re working with people, it’s very social, it’s very enjoyable.

I don’t really know what it is about vampires that makes them such a powerful symbol, metaphor, whatever in people’s consciousness. But I do know they’re tremendously powerful. I mean, there’s a vampire on ‘Sesame...

Obviously death is a theme I’m fascinated by.

I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff on TV. I feel much more optimistic about TV than I do about movies. There will always be good movies but I think, for the most part,...

There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.

If a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.

I’m not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there’s going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what’s going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There...

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it’s coming from.

I really love storytelling, and I love the stories as they reveal themselves. It’s an incredibly nourishing process; it’s probably the closest I come to having a religion.

And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was...

I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence.

In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don’t really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people...

My own belief is that people can come back from anything. It doesn’t mean that it won’t come at a huge cost.

It’s a lot harder to find fault with the mundane details of daily existence when you really, really know on a cellular level that you’re going to go, and that this moment, right now, is...

I know a lot of shows are like, ‘Here’s the pages,’ right before they start filming. I’d have a heart attack. The anxiety would be way too much for me. I don’t have as strong...

Life is infinitely complex, and I feel like we live in a culture that really seems to want to simplify it into sound bites and bromides, and that does not work.

The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous. To me, vampires are sex. I don’t get a vampire story about abstinence. I don’t care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

Ultimately, physical resemblance isn’t as important as whether this person can bring this character to life in a way that’s compelling and makes me care about what happens to them.

Life is too mysterious to try to map it out. I’ve certainly lived long enough to know it will take you places you never thought it would take you – and some of those places...