I've found that if you have two films that don't perform well it doesn't matter that you've had a bunch of successful ones. The phone stops ringing, and after Deadly Blessing and Swamp Thing that's what happened.

There's more emphasis on art and culture in Europe than there is in the United States and I think that a lot of American directors and writers are just trying to copy other American horror films, they don't pick up much in the way that European filmmakers do.

The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.

I think if anybody had a roll of dice with a lot of money at stake, they would not want Wes Craven and a romantic comedy.

I have felt over the years a definite progression or arc from feeling guilty about what I had done with the first one [film], because certainly there was all that fundamentalist guilt that came pouring back in.

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films.

[I was] feeling like I'd done something horrible, "I'm a despicable person and I'm perverse," and all these things, to a sense of the power and the necessity, in a sense, of horror films and dealing with dark material.