Eli Roth Quotes

I like movies like 'Mother's Day', where you watch it, and you've liked it for years as a horror movie.

I can think of endless horrible things to do to people!

I think characters are most terrifying when they're relatable. It's best when your most horrible characters make sense, and are believable. That's when a movie is most terrifying.

I think in life we get very caught up in the minutia and, unfortunately, it generally takes some sort of tragedy in your life to put things in perspective.

Anytime you're the first to speak out against something, there's going to be a backlash.

Possession and exorcism is something that’s in every religion and every culture. It’s a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go?

Even post-WWII, nobody talked about the Holocaust. It wasn't until the '50s that people started talking about it.

Everybody has to know where they're coming from, what they're doing, why they're doing it, who they are. These are essentials.

The point of the first one was that it was about guys being lured by sex and the stereotypes... I always say it's like a horror version of Borat. Borat's not an accurate depiction of Khazakstan, it's an accurate depiction of America. That's what Hostel is.

Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.

In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.

'Eraserhead' is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it.

I always say that no matter what the torture is, or the tool is, first of all it's nothing worse than what's been done already and that wasn't done by the church and the state for over a period of 250 years during the European witch trials.

I love movies that are just straight-up exploitation, but the ones that endure and the ones that last are the ones where the filmmakers put in that extra level of thought; after 25 years you put them on in front of an audience, and they'll respond to it and enjoy it.

When people direct insults at me, I can take it.

I have a strong art-history background.

I love movies that have that resonating scare, that really get under your skin and make you think.

I generally follow my own compass and make films about what's scaring me.

You'd be lucky to get tortured to death in one of my films. It's the best thing that could happen to your career. But I'm very aware that as soon as you put women in this situation, all of a sudden people are like: "Wow, well wait a second!" Immediately, people become very sensitive to it.

When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence.

I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins.

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

There's fear in everything, but we can't just succumb to that. We have to suppress it, so we get used to suppressing fear to make it through the our day. Otherwise, we'd become paralyzed by them.

Horror audiences don't need to see some TV actor they're familiar with.

One of the great joys of life, now that you can afford a nice suit, is getting one for free. That's why I like to do press tours - I always say making movies is just an excuse to get free clothing.

I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.

I never put out a vanilla edition of a DVD.

I love movies. I mean, I really, really love movies.

I have the infinite galaxy from '2001 as my screensaver - so if I space out while I'm writing and it goes to screensaver, I can just stare off into the stars.

I want it to be able to hold up in 30 years' time. So, I'm really thinking about everything.

'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.

I was listening to music to kind of pump myself up and get psyched up, like I was listening to Iron Maiden and Misfits and Dead Kennedys, and it was like my '80s Massachusetts parking-lot heavy metal and Guns N' Roses.

Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things.

I want to have an ending where people say: "That's the most shocking ending I've ever seen in a mainstream horror film."

Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies.

The best movies now are called 'thrillers.' Because if you use the word 'horror,' people's associations are straight-to-video crap.

I have no tattoos. There's nothing I've even been that into to get a tattoo of it.

Sometimes you have this tragedy which turns into an incredible opportunity.

You know, I'm from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand.

I think horror should never be safe, whether it's violent or non violent.

I hear what people say, I read all the reviews, all the blogs, and I am always curious to hear it, because you can't always listen to the good press, you have to hear the bad press, too.

I've always wanted to make a big apocalypse movie. I love 28 Weeks Later, I think it's great but Cell is totally different. It's about people's dependence on technology, the collapse of society and watching everything fall apart. That's something I've always wanted to do, which I believe it can!

If you are having fun on the set, you are not getting things done.

Quentin Tarantino faced the same backlash when his films came out until eventually people felt they were actually much smarter.

I want an iPhone 5, someone said something nasty on twitter, or my boyfriend isn't texting me back, like whatever the thing is that seems so major in your life, when a real disaster hits you suddenly strips it all away and you see what's really important and who you really are.

I think that horror films have a very direct relationship to the time in which they're made. The films that really strike a film with the public are very often reflecting something that everyone, consciously or unconsciously feeling - atomic age, post 9-11, post Iraq war; it's hard to predict what people are going to be afraid of.

As a kid, I was the neighbourhood baby-sitter - very responsible, always in charge.

The world is changing. Social media is a way to sell movies and to build a fan base. The truth is that you have followers because they know you are into it and you're funny and you like it. I think it's great.