Quotes About Horror

I've been fortunate in that the films I've worked on in the horror genre are themselves not pure horror, and have allowed me to write in a wide variety of styles. Those scores contain elements of fantasy, drama, action, comedy... really all types of scoring, and that gives the horror moments more impact. As for scoring the horror moments, I do like approaching the music from the psychological aspect, scoring to the characters' thoughts, emotions, motivations and such.

Audiences are very sophisticated and they know the nuts and bolts of the genre - certainly with horror more than others I think. But they attract lots of people, they're much derided as a genre but people go and see them and they're not all dumb. There's some very clever horror films. Stephen King gets a lot of flack for not being a proper writer because he's a horror writer, but I think he writes some brilliant books. I think it's wrong to just bin it before looking at it.

O horror! Horror! Horror! Tongue nor heart Cannot conceive nor name thee!

I like horror, but I tend to like it as seasoning. I'd get very bored if I was told I had to write a horror novel. I'd love to write a novel with horror elements, but too much, and it doesn't taste of anything else.

You have to have horror that is entertaining, where you can laugh. Most people don't want you to laugh at horror. They just want you to just be disgusted and terrified.

Well it's always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that's one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it's not something I've found myself above either.

I'm not a fan of horror. I don't think a proper horror movie has been done since The Shining.

The truth is, it's very hard looking back... we look at holocaust now with such knowledge and such a sense of the horror of what it was, that it's hard to believe even now that in 1930s and 1940s, before something like this had happened, that it could be impossible to imagine the extent of this horror.

This, then, is the ultimate, that is only, consolation: simply that someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, and — like it or not — peculiar set of experiences to appreciate. Amazing thing to say, the consolation of horror in art is that it actually intensifies our panic, loudens it on the sounding-board of our horror-hollowed hearts, turns terror up full blast, all the while reaching for that perfect and deafening amplitude at which we may dance to the bizarre music of our own misery.

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.

Horror movies in a sense are about the things that you cannot control, cannot define and the things that you are afraid of, and that is what the boogey man is. The boogey man doesn't have a backstory, he is just the thing you fear and I think it is important to celebrate that aspect of horror.

Slashing its way to the finish line, Black Swan is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror.

Mental hospitals are great for horror movies because they're already scary even without the horror or supernatural elements. This is a place where you can play with the ideas of one's sanity, what's real and what's not.

Musically, there's a movement called the flatted fifth that's really evil-sounding. It was outlawed by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. That movement is what gives you a real evil sound that conjures up dark, fantastic images. It's like an audio horror movie. It personifies what a horror movie is about.

I read a lot of ghost stories because I was writing a ghost story. I didn't think at all I was writing a horror or a thriller or whatever because it is about a ghost, whereas a horror film can be about aliens or things that rise out of the marsh that have no human shape.

A lot of the main characters in horror movies are outsiders as well, so that outsider syndrome reverberates within horror fans and geeky collectors. It's kind of a rallying call that brings fans and collectors together who are a little socially retarded, maybe.

I like torture. Torture is photogenic. If you make horror movies, you always have to think what's photogenic and what's not. If you stay home with the candlelight and you read a book, Rilke, or whatever, or Sigmund Freud, it's boring. But if you watch Udo Kier in a horror film and people are hunting me and trying to kill me, and there's my love interest with big breasts and beautiful hair, and I believe in her and they kill me at the end, that's more interesting. We're talking about films here. We're not talking about writing stories.

I'm a horror movie fan to begin with, so to come back to the genre, I feel like horror has been very good to me.

I also remember when I watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer [1990] at, like, age 15. That scared the crap out of me. Because it didn't operate inside the usual conventions of the horror genre in the way that I could accept. I can accept horny teenager counselors being murdered at camp. But I couldn't accept the derangement of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which was that anyone could be murdered at any moment - whole families, with no build-up music and no meaning. It terrified me.

Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can't be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them.

Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it. Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?' A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.' You enjoy this duty?' He nodded. I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.

My imagination completely controls me, and forever feeds the fire that burns with dark red light in my heart by bringing me the best dreams. I've always had a wild imagination, a big heart and a tortured soul so I feel that dark fantasy, love and horror are in my blood.

The advantage of horror books is to take the reader and cut him out of the pack and work on him one on one. It has its advantages because the people that are there in the movie theater really are a mob. If you get one guy alone you can do a more efficient job of scaring him.

We are in a very critical and sensitive time in this nation. We need our president to sit down with folks who have a personal experience, a deep connection to the horror and the pain of this country`s provocative racial history. If the president wants to have a better understanding and appreciation for what he should do next, he needs to hear something from folks who have gone through this painful history. Without that personal connection to the painful past, it will be hard for him to regain that moral authority from my perspective.

I’m in a band. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I’m obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?

[British television series] Hammer House of Horror. I used to really enjoy these one-off stories where often there would be an incredibly cruel twist. A good example is the episode with Burgess Meredith and there's a nuclear war and he drops his glasses. To this day, you can show that to anyone and they'll go "Bwrrrrrrrr!" You know, sort of wander away shuddering.

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.

If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. Mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate.

Entourage [movie] really is established as a genre unto itself, much like the thriller or the horror movie or the comedy. And those things trend.

I'd never imagined myself writing at all until I was almost 30. And horror films weren't to my taste, at least the super popular (slasher-y) ones of the day back then. The first novel I ever loved as a kid was Frankenstein, and I was always a crazy Hitchcock and Polanski fan... but I never saw myself - a square spazzy girl from the suburbs - writing anything that would horrify anyone. Or so I thought.

I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down.

There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.

While vegans and meat-eaters disagree, we can all be united in our fear and hatred for the horror that is factory farming.

One of my favorite things to do within horror is explore this feeling that a lot of people seem to have from time to time, of there being currents of another reality running beneath, or alongside, what we see and interact with every day.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

I do think that once a horror genre is commonly parodied in other movies it sort kills that genre or that specific take on that genre. Once it sort of becomes a joke in and of itself, so you have to push and find something new.

But I don’t think I’ve ever known such a natural at Potions!” said Slughorn. “Instinctive, you know — like his mother! I’ve only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sybill — why even Severus —” And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them.

I just want to make sure that the thing that I see in it initially, that I think it can be, is not just going to be a horror film and reduced to a jump here and a scream there. But that you can take something away from it.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

It definitely could have been a horror story [Valley of Violence], oh my God, if the dog was impossible. So could the horses.

Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

I was horrified of the dark. I realized that the only way I could get over that fear was by scaring other people, so I became obsessed with ghost stories, drawing monsters, watching monster movies, sneaking into horror movies, and it's just been the love of my life forever.

You know, in the horror movie you kill the monster, and the hand re-emerges. And if you're not looking, the hand grows back and then the monster's there again. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.

The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.