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It's really hard to scare people on network television. You've got to be smart about it. You've got to parcel out the scares.

There's a crazy, false notion that audiences are not patient or will not watch a story, that you have to put in a scare every ten minutes. But I always thought that was insane.

People like scary stories. There's a fascination with fear themes, and we want to face those things in a weird, subconscious way.

The anthology format is completely normal to me. That's just how TV works in my experience.

I try not to put pressure on filmmakers to come up with a big scare at the beginning. I think that helps let the audience settle in and get to know the people they're about to spend 90 minutes with. Once the scarier stuff happens, it's scarier because of that.

For me, it's very easy to write a horror movie that's just a succession of scary sequences, but it's hard to find horror movies that have a genuine theme to them that are really exploring some aspect of our psychology and our fears.

I think some horror authors are trying to scare you, but with me, I'm as scared as the reader is of the story. I've always been that way, since watching the 'Twilight Zone' movie - watching 'Firestarter' when my parents were out, or sneaking out to watch 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' at a friend's house because I couldn't watch it at my house.

Really interesting genre films, especially monster movies, evoke the fears of the times intentionally.

I like to think if something scares me, then there's a very good chance an audience will feel the same way. The key is creating scenarios that people can relate to.

The first season, 'Supernatural' was very anthology-like. It was like a scary story of the week that the brothers would solve.