Elvis Mitchell Quotes

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

Vampires have always been hot. They are one of our most durable monsters. It's one of those stories that galvanizes us early and it's always going on.

Vampires were an excellent springboard. I still love them; they fascinate me.

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

With books like 'AD: After Death' and 'Wytches,' a lot of those things are inspired by reading things that terrify me.

I love all that kind of gothic Bram Stoker kind of thing. I love to get lost in that kind of escapism.

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!

More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work.

I would say that in my black readership, more of my readers tolerate the horror aspect of my work, you know. 'I don't usually read this kind of stuff, but.'

Vampires are a genre now.

The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.

I grew up on genre. If it had a dragon on the cover, I was interested. But horror, especially, really gripped me in its bony fist.

It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism.

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.

You know, a vampire book is not a book to be the vehicle for big themes and stuff, where sometimes when you're dealing with art or the life of Christ or the oeuvre of Shakespeare, you know, it's a little more ambitious.

I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.

I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.

But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.

I'm a big fan of vampire movies generally and that sort of tradition of characters.

For me, Dracula has always been associated with travel and beautiful historical places.

I think it's cyclical. Zombies have been around for ages, and vampires have run their course; we've had so many vampire movies.

John Bellairs's young adult mysteries were great - and super creepy.

The 'Hellraiser' situation was pretty darn wonderful and very unusual. Nor did I understand how radically unusual the thesis of 'Nightbreed' was.

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

The 1890s was perhaps the most Gothic decade ever: 'Dracula,' 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and 'The Time Machine,' not to mention 'Heart of Darkness' and 'The Interpretation of Dreams,' were all written between 1890 and 1899.