Jay Parini Quotes

I've been a big fan of Joe Hill ever since his first novel, 'Heart-Shaped Box.'

Stephen King writes a lot of things that are really charming and quirky, and that are more ironic than horror.

I always loved horror, but I read all sorts of books. My favourite as a child was 'The Secret Garden' which has a big influence on Lord Loss, believe it or not!

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list.

'The Thirteenth Tale' is reminiscent of 'Wuthering Heights' because you're never sure if it's a ghost or if people have gone a bit mad; that feeling that's been channelled all the way from Bronte is a really exciting one.

I am drawn to Americana, and I am drawn to gothic stories, and I love American gothic stories.

I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.

I'm a fan of some horror. Some of the really corny b-horror movies I don't love so much, but 'Rosemary's Baby' is one of my favorite movies.

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind.

I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

Stephen King consummately honors several traditions with his rare paperback original, 'Joyland.' He addresses the novel of carny life and sideshows, where the midway serves as microcosm, such as in those famous books by Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney and William Lindsay Gresham.

The beautiful thing about 'The Strain Trilogy' is the ability to move from gore to high fable to creeping dread to domestic drama to unbearable suspense to the uncanny and on and on. The epic journey is designed to support these swings in mood, and that complements my tastes, which are wide-ranging.

I love 'The Stand;' I read it when I was a kid - it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I love Stephen King; I think he's a remarkable writer.

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.

For all its flaws, 'The Hands of Orlac' really is a seminal film, and if you're partial to that particular B-movie subgenre of Demon Body Parts, you really ought to see it.

I didn't make 'The Sixth Sense' because I thought the ending wouldn't work!

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

Subtle horror is where you rarely see the blood and gore. The violent people are called splatter-punks, who prefer graphic, unrelenting, violent, fast-paced horror. I prefer horror stories with mysterious elements that are chock-full of suspense.

Still one of my favorite movies is the original 'The Haunting.' I love that style.

I do love 'The Turn of the Screw' - I just think that one's always so disturbing.

I'm not 100% sure 'Rebecca' qualifies as a thriller, given it's three parts screwed-up love story and two parts ghost-story-without-a-ghost, but the mystery at the heart of the novel is what happened to Maxim's first wife, the eponymous Rebecca, and it's unravelled with the pacing and finesse of the finest psychological thrillers out there.

There was scarcely a month during 1988 when Thomas Harris' novel, 'The Silence Of The Lambs,' was not on or around the top of the 'New York Times' list of America's bestselling books.

Stephen King's 'Mr. Mercedes' is not a conventional horror novel. No ghosts, no vampires, no prune-faced escapees of the graveyard.

I love all Daphne du Maurier's stuff. And just enjoying period dramas, really... wanting to do something drastically different from 'Nighty Night', the chance to write very different language.