The only thing you can do as an artist is to come to the world, see what no one is doing, and leave behind one or two things that wouldn’t have happened without you.

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too.

I love monsters. If I go to a church, I'm more interested in the gargoyles than the saints. I really don't care much about the idea of normal - that's very abstract to me. I think that perfection is practically unattainable but imperfection is right at hand. So that's why I love monsters: because they represent a side of us we should actually embrace and celebrate.

If you can be that link to other people that came before you and the ones that come after, then you have to honor that link. If you are doing what somebody else tells you to do and you have success, it's horrible. And if you are doing what other people tell you to do and you fail, it's equally horrible.

I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it's really great. I don't like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it.

Night is real. Night is not an absence of light, but in fact, it is daytime that is a brief respite from the looming darkness.

We are such skeptics that we find it difficult to believe in God and angels and a spiritual afterlife, but a moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to believe in something beyond that.