Quotes About Horror

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

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

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 The Shining, you love Shelley Duvall. You love Jack Nicholson. You're let into the intimacy of that violence and it's emotional and it's physical. We're let in very close. So I think a good horror film has to pull you in very deeply inside. Halloween is a good horror film because we love Jamie Lee Curtis, we're brought very deeply in right when she's babysitting the kids. She's going from house to house, all those houses have windows that you can look in. We're a very vulnerable and exposed audience.

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.

Horror, for me, has to involve some sort of fantasy. Horror is something that is in your dreams or your nightmares.

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.

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 don't believe in evil; I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.

Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together.

Horror 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?"

If 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.

Horror is always the same. It changes with the culture and changes with technology. The stories are always the same. There are just two basic stories in horror, two simple ones -- evil is outside and evil is in here [points to his heart].

Horror movies often work better when we have a stake in the game. The more we care about the characters, the more human they are to us, the more appealing they are to us and the more effective the horror tends to be.

Physical reality is one of the biggest horror movies of all, and you know how we love horror movies.

I 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.

What I like is horror movies, including '80s slasher movies that politically I have all kinds of problems with. Which is an interesting balance, because I have this leftist puritan strain that, well, if you like something that goes against your politics, maybe you should train yourself not to like it. But I know that I like horror movies and that's what I watch when I get a moment.

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.

I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. ''Out there,'' I called it.

I like making sci-fi movies because I like watching sci-fi movies. I like watching horror. I like being in a horror movie. I'm a fan. My perspective's a little different just because I get to participate as well as spectate.

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 am horror fan in that I think that they are very effective on me. I get scared very easily. I am a scaredy cat. When I was younger, my mom used to rent Alfred Hitchock films, so I saw a couple of those and I was terrified by them.

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?

Horror does not interest me, and so I know little of its practicioners, old or current

I suppose we all have our recollections of our earlier holidays, all bristling with horror.

I came to terms with living mostly in a world of horror pictures or genre pictures.

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

I love watching horror films because I don't get scared easily.

When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

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

What makes horror movies work is the idea that "oh my God, what would I do if I were in that situation? How would I get out of that alive? What would I do if I saw the door to my closet creaking open in the middle of the night and a doll on a tricycle comes riding out?"

I am a big fan of horror movies but I had never thought that I had wanted to act in one because I don't think that actors get to do much in them. They're usually just reacting.

I think it goes without saying that a lot of big horror fans are just nerds and geeks.

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.

Musicals and horror films can be very non-verbal and very pure cinema with movement. The camera is justified in being a character. It can really move and tell a story, and literally direct you to look here or there.

I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom.

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.

People want to be disturbed when they go see a horror movie.

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

I am constantly seeing new horror that I like.

A good horror film is something that taps into something absolutely truthful about us - about what we want, about what we're terrified of - and brings that to life on screen in such a way that we can get close enough to that character to let our defenses down and want them to be safe.

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.

I adore Wilkie Collins,” Tessa cried. “Oh—Armadale! And The Woman in White … Are you laughing at me?” “Not at you,” said Will, grinning, “more because of you. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited over books before. You’d think they were diamonds.” “Well, they are, aren’t they? Isn’t there anything you love like that? And don’t say ‘spats’ or ‘lawn tennis’ or something silly.” “Good Lord,” he said with mock horror, “it’s like she knows me already.

I use as high SPF as I can get, and I live under a hat like a mushroom all the time. Someone said they're worried about their kids getting older and doing drugs, and I got this look of horror on my face and thought, 'What if my girls don't wear hats?' But at 13 months old, they could say 'hat.

To call Clive Barker a 'horror novelist' would be like calling the Beatles a 'garage band'... He is the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also what delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful.

We're not just horror fans. We're film fans. I love action films. I want to do action films. I want to do romantic comedies. I love all this stuff. So, if I find the good material, I'll do it.