Henry Selick Quotes

It's real simple - we all have nightmares, and the idea you can be in real jeopardy in them is a great gimmick. It's universal.

There is an excitement about having nightmares.

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.

In terms of fear, I still am most afraid of Freddie Kruger.

I was a very scared child. Not, you know, not so much of life but of the demons that lurked in the dark. And horror movies terrified me. You know, I'd love watching them but then at night, I would just be up in sweats all night.

I had nightmares as a kid. As an adult, I have very prosaic dreams.

Growing up, I was afraid of the dark.

When I was little, I used to have nightmares about Godzilla walking out of the Great South Bay, because we had a fire alarm out where we lived that sounded just like his feet.

Erlking,” I told her. “Big-time bad guy. Wants to eat me.” “Why?” she asked. “Well. I met him,” I said.

The whole campfire idea freaked Piper out. It made her think of that huge purple bonfire in the dreams, and her father tied to a stake. What she got instead was almost as terrifying: a sing-along.

Usually the people I do know are sufficient to spawn any number of nightmares without inventing any.

Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.

But puberty was... well, before puberty, at school, I didn't tell kids I was a transvestite 'cause I thought they might kill me with sticks, you know?

That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall.

Unfortunately, a superabundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares

Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.

She pushed the gardener away and called for them. In her sleep she had seen love. It was poisoning. It was possessing. Devouring. Or it was seven pairs of boots climbing up the stairs to find her.

Nightmares end. That's how you know they're nightmares.

Roses. Wolf mutts. Tributes. Frosted Dolphins. Friends. Mockingjays. Stylists. Me. Everything screams in my dreams tonight.

Most fan have been like, "You're a monster, you give me nightmares, don't talk to me."

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules.... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

Darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower. Of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. Light in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, moral hope. As the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, "Who? Who?"

Don't open that door," she said. "The hallway is full of difficult dreams." And I asked her: "How do you know?" And she told me: "Because I was there a moment ago and I had to come back when I discovered I was sleeping on my heart.

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.