Quotes About Horror

The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.

Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen.

With The Exorcist we said what we wanted to say. Neither one of us view it as a horror film. We view it as a film about the mysteries of faith. It's easier for people to call it a horror film. Or a great horror film. Or the greatest horror film ever made. Whenever I see that, I feel a great distance from it.

A good horror movie - it doesn't matter how many comedy horror films there have been before. Doesn't matter how much you think it's going to be funny. A good horror movie will scare the hell out of you... the moment you sit down and you start being exposed to that story, it's going to freeze your blood.

I love horror comedies, and I love horror movies. In particular, I love horror movies from the '80s that have practical monsters in them. They're not just slasher movies with people going to kill people in people's houses. I do like these ridiculous monster movies. They're scary, but they're absurd. I had a lot of fun in my 20's, watching a lot of these movies late at night.

Mainly horror movies and exploitation movies and a lot of stuff comes from those press books from those old movies. Lines out of old movies, comic books that we collect, all the old horror comics of the 50s, probably about the only comics that we collect are obscure horror comics, the real sick ones from the 50s. Some stuff comes from there but mainly just old records, old rockabilly records and that stuff, singles mainly, 45s.

I don't know. I think that horror, in general, is fairly popular. It's definitely popular in film. There's just not a lot of good horror on TV, so whenever there is good horror on TV, people rush to it.

Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.

I have a really hard time watching gory stuff and horror movies. I have said no to some horror movie things. I wouldn't rule it out; I could probably be convinced to do one. But sometimes, I just get ill.

I think horror comedies tend to skew more comedy than horror, for the most part.

Certainly, black horror movie fans have, you know, been particularly vocal. I mean, there's the whole Eddie Murphy routine about, you know, black people in a horror movie wouldn't last very long. Right? They just walk in - you hear get out. Too bad we can't stay, baby.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.

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 is a reaction; it's not a genre. Somebody's life would have to be in danger for it [story] to be a horror story.

With horror movies, a bigger budget is actually your enemy. You want to feel the rough edges, the handmade quality to good horror films. Its a genre that benefits from not having everything at your disposal.

I love horror movies, I wish I would get more roles to do more horror movies. I got to make a living so I take what they give me, but if I could be the next Vincent Price I would be the happiest guy in the world.

Screaming. Did I mention the screaming? Screaming is usually associated with horror films and roller coasters. This is why I usually look like I've just watched a horror film on a rollercoaster. Kids love to scream. Frightened, happy, bored. They scream. I've actually learned to love the sound of a vacuum cleaner. It's just so peaceful.

And another thing about German symphonic development. I tell you, our cold kvass soup is a horror to the Germans, and yet we eat it with pleasure. And their cold cherry soup is a horror to us, and yet it sends a German into ecstacy. In short, symphonic development is just like German philosophy and soup-all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with some reasoning.

All the horror is in just this -- that there is no horror. . . .

I love horror movies in space. I love it when the genre switches over and what was sci-fi becomes horror.

Buddy Hackett [was] talking - this is Hackett, not me - about the Virgin Mary, a limerick sort of thing, and all these children and families ... the look of absolute horror. He's going on and on and on, and finally he stops. It's just total horror, and the camera's still rolling. You can hear it, sort of a grinding noise. And the director says, "Anything else, Bud?"

A lot of the main audience thinks video game-based movies are always horror movies but it's totally not true. In video games you have adventure, sci-fi, horror, action and even comedy. I think that people should accept more that video games are kind of like the best-selling books of the new generation.

I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].

Isn’t it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? …Isn’t it only through laughter we can stay human?

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself.

I grew up doing musicals. I've done so many musicals in my life, I kind of got them out of my system. But, I certainly would be open to them. Rocky Horror Show is a big favorite of mine.

Who has that absolute trust, to fling yourself into mortality, to let it do with you as it will, with all the permutations and possibilities of as it will, be it horror or ecstasy or boredom?

Hop in? Dude, are you out of your ever-loving mind? I can’t touch this. I might leave a fingerprint or something. (Nick) Oh the horror. Guess I’ll have to trade the piece of junk in and get a new one if that happens. (Acheron)

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.

What's inspiring me the most [is] injustice. My own growth as a member of the human race, in terms of the veils being lifted, seeing more of the beauty and also the horror. A sense of my own purpose in this life. Love...

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.

It's just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It's never going to be as good as the first one.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

I've always thought the best way to teach a kid not to be scared of the dark is to fill his daylight hours with as much horror as possible.

Oh dear, is that a skunk?" Leonora asked. "No," Alessandro gasped in horror. "No the smelly cat!" "I've told you, Alessandro darling, they aren't cats." "They look like cats. Like the big fluffy cat she's been stepped on and flattened to a big fluffy pancake cat," Alessandro argued.

The latest horror to hit the U.S. looks to have been caused by people of Middle Eastern origin, bearing Muslim names. Again, shame. This fuels more hatred for a religion and a people who have nothing to do with these events.

Some people in Indonesia say they are content, but in fact most of them are miserable. People say they are not poor, even if they take water from the gutter and live in a carton shack. They say they are not afraid, because even the horror they are experiencing every day, is not allowed here to be defined as fear. If it is, the families, the officials, and mass media, mock it.

What a great unifier getting scared is. Not in an actual threatening, real-world way, but getting scared from horror movies or haunted houses or ghost stories. You laugh because it's a release. People laugh when they're nervous. I laugh so much at a haunted house. It's out of fear, but it's also a wonderful release. Getting scared like that, you feel good, and you feel exhilarated afterwards.

Horror, let's face it, is basically pretty dumb. You're writing about events that are preposterous, and the trick is to dress them up in language so compelling that the reader doesn't care.

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.

The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make.

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.

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

Horror films do not prepare us for the hours lost in searching after one clear thought.

So even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end, love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real.

Monarchs not only fashion their age, but are fashioned by it, so that they can become a sort of personification of the age. If Elizabeth I, independent, strong, represents the age of Shakespeare's heroines, a woman's heyday, Victoria represents another image of womanhood, predominant in the nineteenth century: a woman who, although queen in her own right, leaned on her husband, looked up to him, and went into perpetual mourning after his death. The feminist movement filled her with shocked horror and outrage.

I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.