George A. Romero Quotes

I think some horror authors are trying to scare you, but with me, I'm as scared as the reader is of the story. I've always been that way, since watching the 'Twilight Zone' movie - watching 'Firestarter' when my parents were out, or sneaking out to watch 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' at a friend's house because I couldn't watch it at my house.

I always write about my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.

I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.

I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.

With American Morons, Glen Hirshberg confidently shoulders his way through the generational pack to claim his rightful place on the summit. These stories are smart, challenging, ripe with feeling, expansive in every way: Horror as it should be writ, and as only the best and most expressive can write it.

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

To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author's part. Consequently, they are totally at a loss if anything essential is altered. Make Abraham Lincoln a dentist, put the Gettysburg Address on his tongue, and nobody will recognize it.

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

I do believe the world is a pretty sad, troubled, and violent place. Maybe that's why I focus on the trouble. Even though there are good people and good things, there's also a bunch of messed up stuff. And I learned early on, you have to have some trouble in your stories. I definitely go overboard on that, but I have a lot more fun writing about the trouble.

It's the function of a playwright to write. Some playwrights write a large number of plays, some write a small number.

That's the wonderful thing about drama and writing and fiction: it's this wonderful shared experience that we all have. We can see into each other's lives.

The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything.

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?

I might like to be an actor, but there are loads of other things I'm interested in as well, like music and writing and sports. I want to keep my options open.

To write drama is to leave a can of Coke by the side of the road. Then, sit on that can of Coke. Where's the can of Coke now?

Write as if your parents are dead.

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

I've done my "mind over matter" movies, and I think probably that people aren't really interested in seeing me do that anymore. I think I'm kind of past my prime to do dramatic films. I think it'd become kind of like almost a pathetic cry out to be recognized as a serious drama actor.

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.

I genuinely am sort of an emotionally stunted man-child, so if I just write to the top of my intelligence, it sounds like a teenager. I like being around teenagers. It's good for drama; they feel everything much more intensely than adults do, their lives are much more interesting than ours. They're mutants. They have these weird bodies that are rebelling against them and changing every day. Teenagers always equal good drama.

Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you're doing an origin story there's a lot of room for manoeuvre.

The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it.

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear.