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 fans need horror, okay? They don't need little worms squirming around going down your throat. To them, that's not horror.

When horror turns into gore, when you show the monster, the killings, and the blood, it loses its suggestive powers. It loses part of what makes a horror film a horror film, which is that the images you see develop in your brain and you become the one imagining what you are not seeing on screen.

There are the horror fans that love the Evil Dead because of the humor, but I’m sure it’s not all of them. Not all horror fans love Evil Dead because of the humor, at least not me.

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?

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

I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.

The chief difference between horror fans and science fiction fans lies in why they won't walk backwards. A horror fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll be knifed by a madman. A science fiction fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll step on the cat.

I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.

The action movie, the thriller and the drama all have safety nets under them. But not the horror film. The horror film can sink to an abyss far darker than the imagination can ever reach.

There's something very terrifying about that and very primal about it. It's my belief that what horror does for people is that it provides that primal fear that, when we were wild hunter-gatherers, we had as part of our natural lives because maybe something was trying to hunt and gather you as well. We don't have that anymore in life and that's one of the things that horror films and action films provide for us.

Somebody pointed out to me that there's no horror film on my resume, which is true, but I also don't really go see those movies. Although when I was thinking about it, I was thinking "I would probably have a really nice beach house if I made a horror movie." They seem to be very popular. I just don't think it's my thing.

Along with supernature and science, there is one other major source of horror movies disorder: the human psyche, most commonly homicidal psychosis. Unlike 'mad' scientists, horror-movies madmen are not visionary obsessives, glorifying in scientific reason as they single-mindedly purse their researches. They are, rather, victims of overpowering impulses that well up from within; monsters brought forth by the sleep of reason, not by its attractions.

If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.

Horror has been a genre since the beginning of cinema, all the way back to the days of silent films. I don't think it will ever go away because it's so universal. Humor doesn't always travel to other countries, but horror does.

I think there's been a gigantic shift in the way we talk to each other, and the way that we communicate with each other. So as a filmmaker, the stuff's always been really interesting to me, and I sort of considered a lot of my films horror films, the ones that were relationship dramas, because I feel like it was very easy to look at modern communication and the Internet and cell phones and all that stuff as horror movies, basically.

But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.

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

There are a lot of war memorials around the UK. It's usually a part of the war memorials. I loved the way The Glorious Dead sounded. It's kind of a strange thing to say. There's nothing particularly glorious about being dead. It sounded like a strange, horror film. It just grew from there, really. It seemed quite apt for the record. We're kind of obsessed with zombie movies and horror films. It seemed like it just fit, at the time.

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.

I don't like horror, which is ridiculous because I've been in three horror movies, but when I see those things, I see camera tricks and fake blood and actors screaming and I don't know understand why other actors don't see that.

I love horror movies. I mean, who doesn't like a good horror movie every once in a while? It's fun to get scared.

Horror is a totally different animal. It's intense. You can do drama or comedies, but in horror, you really have to trick yourself into believing a lot of unbelievable phenomena.

Horror movies are here to stay, you know? It's not a fad. Even the musical has gone in and out of style from time to time. Horror movies have always been around.

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.

Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.

I don't want you leaving laughing, I want to leave you shaking. That to me is true horror.

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

I think there can always be beauty in struggle. I mean, as far as childbirth, I had my son in the hospital, but then I had my daughter at home. There's no doubt that there's a struggling in birth, and a beauty and a horror and fear and joy too.

Tantra is the perception of the oneness and the perfection of all things. Not just the perception of light, but the perception of darkness, seeing God in both beauty and horror.

I have a lot of stories. I had done a thing called Nightmare in Red White and Blue, which was an anthology of horror films. I narrated it with a man named Joe Maddrey, who's a writer. He came to my house and said, "Lance would you consider doing this?," and I like Joe so much that I completely relaxed.

[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.

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.

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget!" "You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."

What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.

I am actually a big sissy, and growing up, I never used to watch horror movies. Bambi gave me nightmares.

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.

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.

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.

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

L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.

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.

I was shooting Beyond Redemption, I started shooting American Horror Story, so I was going back and forth between Northern California and LA. That was not bad at all - that flight is like getting on the subway, it's nothing. And then during rehearsals.

Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?

I'm having fun with what I'm doing but I'd never categorically say no to something because it's not horror. I'm keeping an open mind.

I'm a fan of good horror movies.