Quotes About Horror

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle.

The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.

I love horror movies! I've loved horror movies since I was about eight years old, not that an 8-year-old should be watching The Shining, but I was allowed to, for some reason. Ever since then, I've loved good horror movies.

Anyone can do shock value. Develop enough tension and cue the music right, then have something jump out: It's almost impossible not to jump in your seat. But that doesn't leave any effect on you when you leave the movie theater. To me, the best horror is psychological horror. The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, things that kind of stick with you long after you've seen them. It's what you don't see. It's letting the audience think a little bit, not spelling it out for them. Giving them credit for using their own imaginations rather than sticking in gags and tricks.

In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.

I did so many comedies that we've had numerous discussions about horror of film and I've always been really hesitant to do so because the last thing I wanted to make was a horror movie.

It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting re­invented and it always will. Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.

Oh, filmmakers, please don't take my soft book and turn it into a horror, or take my horror and make it soft.

As a filmmaker, I love the medium. I have a great affection for it and I've been lucky enough to do all different kinds of films. The greatest part of the success I've had comes from horror. I love the idea of mixing humor and horror and to me, it's all a giggle.

I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.

I 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.

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

Horror 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.

I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books.

As an adult, the only people who care about horror movies are academics. No one loves to talk about horror films more than somebody with a Ph.D. in cultural studies at a university.

It's a convention, but in horror movies the female characters usually tend to believe easier in a supernatural event.

Horror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.

Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.

But it is Bella, not the supernaturals she falls in with, who is the true horror show here, at least as a female role model.

I'm mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here

I 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?

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.

I came to terms with living mostly in a world of horror pictures or genre pictures. I have had a few chances to get outside and do something different, like Paris, Je T'Aime or Music Of The Heart, but mostly it's been my lot. And to have created, with a few shocking films, an awareness or a perception of me as somebody dangerous and scary - that can be sold, but trying to sell me for some other kind of picture, like Music Of The Heart, was very difficult.

Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.

People can get obsessed with romance, they can get obsessed with political paranoia, they can get obsessed with horror. It's isn't the fault of the subject matter that creates the obsession, I don't think.

I have a horror of sentimentality, and I cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saëns.

Most of my horror inspiration is really older stuff and really new stuff.

Well, yeah! Now they're considered golden oldies, which is awesome. I was watching Little Women recently, and I didn't want to get up for fear of missing something. And Heathers is like my own Rocky Horror Picture Show; I recite the lines when it's on. It may seem odd, but I think it's because they're really good movies.

Metal guys are huge nerds. A good percentage of them are either horror or sci-fi or comic book or fantasy nerds.

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.

There'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.

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.

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.

At this point in my career, it doesn't bother me much that I'm probably hopelessly typecast. I like to work, and horror films definitely keep me working.

The 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.

Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.

Alien is one of my favourite films. I'm a classic horror fan. It's a tough one for me, because I get scared quite easily.

People come back from flights and tell you a story like it's a horror story. That's how bad they make it sound. They're like, 'It was the worst day of my life. We didn't board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.' Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?'

I know what I miss as a cinemagoer is that balance of films that actually scare me, they're so few and far between. I loved ghost stories, I love horror stories, I love all of that stuff, but I really yearn for something to actually frighten me.

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? -- Love. That was his answer.

I would love a little bit of a change. I feel so fortunate to have been able to work so much, particularly in the horror-thriller genre, but I would love to be able to do something perhaps a little more dramatic or even a romantic comedy.

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.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

I like all of the mental, psychological thriller movies too. I enjoy horror movies across the board.

The daemonic-divine object may appear to the mind an object of horror and dread, but at the same time it is no less something that allures with a potent charm, and the creature, who trembles before it, utterly cowed and cast down, has always at the same time the impulse to turn to it, nay even to make it somehow his own.

I think in the case of horror, it's a chance to confront a lot of your worse fears and those fears usually have to do, ironically, with powerlessness and isolation.