Wes Craven Quotes

When you're watching Psycho, there' s that moment when you have a visceral reaction to watching someone being stabbed. And then you have the intellectual revelation that you're not, and that's where the celebration comes in.

Horror is about dreams and heightened states. It really is about taking away the logic on some level and getting right to the emotion of something.

You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative.

The horror genre is real cathartic. It allows us to bring out the things that scare us and get it out and have an emotional release.

Horror serves a cathartic role in human society, all throughout the world. It is a way of confronting the darkness, both within and without.

We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.

I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.

I'm not a huge fan of horror movies myself because I'm a big baby and I get too scared to watch them.

I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.

Oh, I love horror movies, yeah.

I think when people are scared, they like to see movies where the scares are not real.

The number of mystery and horror writers I've met who are just the sanest and the nicest people... it's crazy. Maybe it's because the writing gets something out of the system?

I love, love, love, love horror movies.

A lot of my work has been about stuff I've been frightened of: cliffs, explosions, meteorites, that kind of stuff. I would have been this trembling blob of fear if I hadn't got into making art, which is a good way of deferring it.

I'm a horror fan in general.

I think safely experiencing fear by watching a horror movie makes real life a little less frightening.

What's so exciting and unstoppable about the horror genre is that I view it all as metaphorical exploration. It's the safe place that we, as a culture, can deal with things that upset and frighten us - the darker side of our nature.

After a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, "Wow, everything's still here. I'm OK!" We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge, and when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you're falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.

People would always say horror movies always thrive during times of war; that's just what people would say. And I don't know if they thrived during World War II or Vietnam, but I thought that's kind of strange, why would that happen. I don't know if people rearrange their priorities; in good times, they freak out and start pointing the fingers at video games and TV, but when horrible things are happening in the world, a horror movie just seems a little ridiculous.

Horror films don't create fear. They release it.

Something like Nightmare On Elm Street, to me, was kind of an examination of levels of consciousness and the pain of facing the truth, and how easy it is to fall asleep, or want to fall asleep.

A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself . . . with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

I see people's need to dream, people's need to escape - you see it! That's why people come to comedy shows, that's why they come to your movies ... We're so needed in this world. Not as much as medicine , but to dream for a while.

Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.

I don't see any harm in letting whatever comes out come out of you, even if it's sort of weird, or dark, or painful, or too embarrassing, or whatever. I feel like you might as well get it down for yourself. It can't do anything but help you get to where you want to be by recognizing the thoughts that you're having.