Quotes About Horror

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.

It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.

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 think readers appreciate those of us who stay in the trenches and fight the good fight even when times get tough. I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror. As far as I'm concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that's the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.

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

I 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.

I just want to be with great teachers. If that means I'm in a horror film with good teachers, I'll do another horror film. But I would love to branch out and do more comedy or just more straight dramas.

There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though - ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature - and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.

I grew up on genre - on Westerns, spy thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy novels, horror novels. Especially horror novels.

There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand. Internal is the human heart.

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.

The scariest movie I have ever seen, and my favorite horror film is, 'The Exorcist.' It is a must-see horror/thriller classic. I watch it every couple of years.

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

So I was asked to do horror film after horror film, a series of about five, after that, and some of those were a little too gruesome. I wasn't too comfortable all the time in those. I didn't really care for them.

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.

I have a romantic comedy I'd love to make, but I can't get the money for it. It's hard to get people to give you money for an arty romantic comedy when you've done a horror movie. So I can just sit there and keep complaining about that, or I can go make another horror movie this year. People will get behind me on that, because I'm relatively bankable. As long as I can do my own thing with it, I'll keep doing it.

Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror? It's just an ocean of horror.

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.

Musically, there's a movement called the flatted fifth that's really evil-sounding. It was outlawed by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. That movement is what gives you a real evil sound that conjures up dark, fantastic images. It's like an audio horror movie. It personifies what a horror movie is about.

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.

Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.

The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”)

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 don't believe terror and horror are just vicarious pleasures. I think it routes itself in your mind. It can affect your mind. Look at what's going on in the America today. The violence is just awful and I think a lot of has to do with what they are showing on the movies and television.

The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skillful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion . . .

I'm often just writing just to write. I'm not writing with...If I write, like, sitting down with a goal in mind, it's always, like, the worst. It turns into a ska song even if I'm trying to write like a horror movie sound track or something.

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?

When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over and you're strong and you can handle it. But a lot of people can't handle it. And they see horror stories. They see events that you couldn't see in a movie, nobody would believe it.

I also love horror movies; I like me a big Peter Berg action movie. I'm a movie lover in general.

I ate him," said the homunculus, biting into his sausage. The kids couldn't hide their looks of horror. He smiled, sausage juice running down his chin. "Oh, don't worry - I cooked him first. I'm not a barbarian.

I love the horror genre and the thriller genre, so I've got no problem with playing a psycho.

I woke up one day and I realized I wasn't born beautiful, but my wife was, so I decided to make a horror film about it: what it would be like to be born beautiful.

The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision.

The point of departure for my creation was not primarily the destiny of the sixteen Carmelites of Compiègne but the figure of the young Blanche. In a historic sense she never lived, but she received the breath of life from my internal spirit, and she cannot be detached from the origin, which is hers. Born in the profound horror of a time darkened by the signs of destiny, this figure arose before me in some way as the embodiment of the mortal agony of an era going totally to its ruin.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. . . . You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

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 love the idea of comedy in horror. I think this should be allowed.

One phrase summarizes the horror of hell. "God isn't there."

Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.

It 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.

I had Paterson, and The Art Lover, to guide me for The Tales of Horror (written from 1988-'97 and published in 1999), but I still was so lost, back then, as I tried to understand what I was writing and how it went together. There was a draft of that manuscript that had all these brightly colored paper clips on the pages so I could visualize what I saw as the book's themes and threads - that was a long time ago.

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

Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.

Young, gay and stuck in Arkansas? Sounds like a horror flick.

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.

I mean, horror films in general put humans in these awful supernatural or horrible situations, but 'Cabin In The Woods' cranks it up a few notches and becomes outrageous and totally bizarre.

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

It's just person after person in every different country that has a life that I can’t even imagine and has gone through horror that I can’t even imagine.