"Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force."
"The good horror tale will dance its way to the center of your life and find the secret door to the room you believed no one but you knew of—as both Albert Camus and Billy Joel have pointed out, The Stranger makes us nervous... but we love to try on his face in secret."
"It may be that nothing in the world is so hard to comprehend as a terror whose time has come and gone - which may be why parents can scold their children for their fear of the boogeyman, when as children themselves they had to cope with exactly the same fears (and the same sympathetic but uncomprehending parents). That may be why one generations nightmare becomes the next generations sociology, and even those who have walked through the fire have trouble remembering exactly what those burning coals felt like."
"Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not...and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever."
"I recognize terror as the finest emotion (used to almost quintessential effect in Robert Wises film The Haunting, where, as in The Monkeys Paw, we are never allowed to see what is behind the door), and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, Ill go for the gross-out. Im not proud."
"...the best horror films, like the best fairy tales, manage to be reactionary, anarchistic, and revolutionary all at the same time."
"We may only feel really comfortable with horror as long as we can see the zipper running up the monsters back, when we understand that we are not playing for keepsies."