Popular quotes about Horror! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 23
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.
Reece ShearsmithHorror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.
Kirk HammettI 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.
Ken MarinoI've always wanted to do a horror movie, and I grew up watching a lot of horror. I now, recently in life, don't have the stomach for it because I spend so much time in it.
Lauren CohanWe've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don't think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.
Adam GopnikAnything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror!
Joseph ConradI have quite a close relationship with violence and horror. They are enjoyable and terrible. I try and offset the horror with a sense of satisfaction or humor. You can't write a book that is entirely dark without having little spots that hopefully make you laugh out loud.
Evie Wyld"That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy." Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us... all those things." But buried alive?! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know the one with all the horror." "I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?" "Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me."
Eoin ColferI don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.
Dan BrownHorror 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.
Larry FessendenHorror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.
Irwin ShawIf a country has a fascist leader, this is a great horror for that country; but there is much greater horror: The existence of ignorant and unethical masses who support that primitive leader!
Mehmet Murat IldanHorror films are very functional like comedies. The main thing with a comedy, the big question is "is it funny?" And with horror the question is "is it scary?"
Leigh WhannellYou have to take the horror seriously but there's gags aplenty. Most people, when they do horror it's just grim.
Bruce CampbellIf you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.
Don RoffI never actually wanted to write horror, oddly enough. It was a kind of misnomer, because I didn't ever actually write horror in the sense of the genre known for it. It was more a type of pigeon-holing in bookshops.
Peter JamesHorror need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day, the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways.
Vincent CanbyThe same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha!
Kirk HammettA 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.
Uwe BollI have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.
Stephen KingI 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.
Udo KierGetting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.
Kirk HammettI looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?
Richard RussoBorn to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.
Thomas BoswellAll grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.
Joseph de MaistreThe 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.
Stephen King[Albert Camus]didn't have much hope that things would work out, but he wanted them to. Algeria had reached such a degree of violence that once such violence is created there's no more room for reflection. And there's no mediating position. If you look at Bosnia today, the Croats, Bosnians and Serbs, they've all created so much horror that one starts to wonder how these peoples can live together, after having done what they have. Already the violence has reached such a degree that everybody is living in hate, there's no possibility of reflection, no mediating position.
Catherine CamusOh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.
Anthony HopkinsIt is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.
Bela LugosiIt is interesting to note that the best periods of Italian Horror films came out of the Sixties, when Italy was enjoying a carnival period of phenomenal optimism, and the shadowy side surfaced with all of its attendant dark, beautiful, baroque, catholic symbolism.
Barbara SteeleThere's always a tone that you have to hit right in horror. With the blood, you want to make sure that it makes sense all along.
Fede AlvarezI seem to remember telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any more school rules,โ said Dumbledore. Ron opened his mouth in horror. โWhich goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words,โ Dumbledore went on, smiling.
J. K. RowlingHorror, 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.
T. E. D. KleinThe first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated.
Stephen KingHorror films do not prepare us for the hours lost in searching after one clear thought.
Norman MailerBrightpaw's eye opened and she fixed a cloudy gaze on Fireheart. "What happened?" he repeated. "What did this?" A thin wailing came from Brightpaw, which gradually formed into words. Fireheart stared at her in horror as he made out what she was trying to say. "Pack, pack," she whispered. "Kill, kill.
Erin HunterIn a business that has exploited and ignored our people I have only found dead-ends. We need romantic comedies, gross-out and mockery comedies, horror and thrillers, teen movies and love-stories. All these and more will be a positive step towards the future of Native Americans in the world and film industry; an industry that that offers us not only the chance to play the parts of heroes, love interests and warriors, but also of villains, dorks and dangerous, brokenhearted products of circumstance.
Misty UphamHis (Lloyd Kaufman) string of low-budget, lowbrow horror comedies stretching back to the โ80s has been cited as influence by Peter Jackson, the Farrelly Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Takashi Miike, and Guillermo Del Toro, just to cite a few prominent examples.
Lou LumenickYou cannot be born and you cannot die. You will exist in a universe that goes on forever. That is the ultimate horror from the Zen point of view. You could be unhappy forever.
Frederick LenzThe look she gave me reminded me of when is was seven and I'd proudly informed out housekeeper that I'd donated half my clothing to a charity drive at school. It had seemed perfectly sensible to me-I didn't need so much stuff-but she'd stared at me like Margaret was now, with a mix of horror and disbelief.
Kelley ArmstrongThe world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms?
J. K. Rowling