If I had any deadly secrets, I wouldn't still be alive.

I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.

Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff didn't like the word 'horror'. They, like I, went for the French description: 'the theatre of the fantastique'.

To be a legend, you've either got to be dead or excessively old.

I didn't want to be known as a man who only made horror films. I made some - very few.

You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it.

The thing I have always tried to do is surprise people, to present them with something they didn't expect.