John Carpenter Quotes

I think horror films always have to be as simple as possible.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Nothing's scarier than wrestling The Boogeyman.

You are an educated man. You know there are no such things as demons." Bast smiled a terrible smile. "There is only my kind." Bast leaned closer still, Chronicler smelled flowers on his breath. "You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?

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

I love to be scared. Not, 'Hey, I think I smell smoke...' scared, but creepy, paranoid, what's-that-out-there-in-the-dark, ghost story scared. It's no surprise that I was the girl who got invited to the slumber parties because I could be counted on to tell a tale to scare the bejesus out of you.

I love horror, I love scary movies, I love thrillers. If things creep you out and spook you? I love it.

I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

Magic frightens people almost as much as it intrigues them.

Horror is beyond the reach of psychology.

In a ghost story, usually you've got to hang on until daylight, and you'll be alright. But if daylight's four months away, then you have a problem.

'Ravenswood' is horror. It's not slasher, but it's psychological and spiritual horror.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

I don't watch any horror films. I get scared very easily.

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

There's monsters in all of us, but there's also vulnerability.

Darkness might seem to obscure what's happening, but I find it's always pretty revelatory: it brings out the awe in us, the fear in us, the excitement of exploring the hidden or unknown. It seems to conceal, but it really shines a light on what we want, what we need, and what we'll do to get it. Especially when we think no one can see us.

I can never go to a clairvoyant. I'd be too afraid of what they might tap into.

We need horror stories for people to focus on.

I loved ghost stories. I love horror stories. I love all of that stuff, but I really yearn for something to actually frighten me. It's more of a yearning for that than something that has to necessarily be cerebral or sophisticated. Good storytelling and something that actually frightens you.

Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear.

It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go.

Horror films are very effective to me; they have an impact on me. I think that real life things scare me a lot more.