In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh– whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish– thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust.

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.

If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood.

There are two types of producing deals, and I've had both. I've produced over 20 movies now. You are either watching in horror, as the cars take the curve in the grand prix, or you're enjoying it.

I think that is the ultimate cowardice, when someone makes your choices for you in an institutional way. And you just say, "Well, I have no other option."

What is fantastic for me is that the Romantic movement comes out as a counter balance to everything that has been accumulating since the Age of Reason. I think the downfall of imagination as a genre or as a perception starts with the Age of Reason, which says everything else that came before us, all those superstitions, all those myths, are childish.

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.