Quotes from Matt Duffer

I don't believe in ghosts, but I believe in aliens and alternate dimensions.

We wish we had known that success takes time, that it's gonna require an unimaginable amount of hard work, that you're going to have to pretend you know what you're doing even when don't, and that as cheesy and cliche as it may sound, following your heart is actually... the key to everything.

We asked ourselves the question: is there anything we wished we had known before heading out into the terrifying unknown that is the 'real world.' Turns out yeah. There's a lot we wish we had known.

When you shoot at slow-motion, or a high frame rate, it makes it really difficult to rack focus.

We grew up in Durham, N.C.

We were running around in the woods telling stories and putting on costumes. We're terrible actors, but we acted in everything that we did, and it was fun.

A debate about candy bars can get heated.

The first movie I fell in love with was Tim Burton's 'Batman,' which isn't Chicago, obviously, it's Gotham.

We push ourselves and each other to be better. We're close enough that we're not timid around one another. We pitch so many ideas every day - sometimes good, sometimes bad. But it's great to have a safety net where hopefully, between the two of us, nothing really bad will ever get through.

We've written for network television, where you have to worry about hitting these ad breaks, you have to worry about 42 minutes and 10 seconds exactly.

I loved the 'Lord of the Rings' books, 'The Hobbit.' And my parents, they still don't understand it because they hate fantasy stuff. Neither of them are into it. So I don't know where it comes from.

When we were kids, the type of friends we hung out with were more creative types.

When we billed the project to Netflix, we had this big two-and-a-half-minute trailer that had about 20 or 30 of these movies kind of woven together to try and tell the story of 'Stranger Things,' but obviously all these images or ideas were in our heads.

In kindergarten, we'd tell stories with our toys. We'd set a timer for two hours because we knew that was how long a movie was.

We lived in an ordinary suburb and had an ordinary childhood. It didn't feel like the 'South.' Everyone says Durham is a bunch of northern yankees transplanted to North Carolina. The stereotypical South does exist - if you drove 10 miles in the wrong direction you'd be right in the middle of it. We didn't grow up with that.

We shared the same fears as kids - snakes and clowns. Now we also have more adult fears, like television critics.

Us and everyone in Hollywood puts so much time and effort and money into getting things to look just right and when you see it in someone's home, it looks like it was shot on an iPhone.

My favorite thing is that young people are having 'Stranger Things' parties and binge-watching it. Hopefully, it leads them to go back and discover some of these movies and folks who inspired us so much.

When we saw 'The Knick' or 'True Detective,' they had very distinct scores that were doing very distinct things.

Dragon's Lair' we played a lot as kids. It's a fun game to look at - it's not a very fun game to play. Everyone who played it as a kid had the same experience: It's outrageously expensive, it looks really cool, it draws you in like a magnet, and then it just takes your money and is very frustrating.

What we loved about the movies we watched as children was the great character work. They are all about the place where the ordinary meets the extraordinary.

Yeah, if I'm fried mentally, incapable of directing for a second, Ross is there and will take over. Or at least, together we can somehow manage make it through the day.

Freddy Krueger scared us. 'Hellraiser' really messed us up.

You have to go through a big process with the Directors Guild in order to get co-direction credit. They sit you in front of this microphone in front of like 40 legendary directors, and they start grilling you.