I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

The act of writing itself is done in secret, like masturbation.

Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.

He supposed that even in Hell, people got an occasional sip of water, if only so they could appreciate the full horror of unrequited thirst when it set in again.

I've never seen novels as built things. I have a tendency to see them as found things so that I always feel a little bit like an archaeologist who's working to get some fragile fossil out of the ground. And the more you get out unbroken, the better you succeed.

Horror movies often work better when we have a stake in the game. The more we care about the characters, the more human they are to us, the more appealing they are to us and the more effective the horror tends to be.