I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.

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

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

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.

Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.

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.