The terror drifted over georgetown like the sun over a blind mans eyes

When the filter is weakened by a powerful drug, what we see is not delusion but the truth.

But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.

Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.

As far as God goes, I _am_ a nonbeliever. Still am. But when it comes to a devil---well, that's something else.

I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.

I tried to make every bit of it as creepy as I could. And I had the same response you do. I feel the same way. The hospital scenes, that procedure was so real.