Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained - if you ate animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.
I'm a fan of short horror fiction... in fact, the most memorable horror I've read is of the short variety... but I have a hard time pulling it off myself.
In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hourglass - all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.
The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours - and I think probably gave me many nightmares.
The history of horror movies goes back a long way... of people trying to convincingly be terrified when looking at a piece of tape on the side of the camera box. I have a whole new respect for it.
Believe it or not, my introduction to scary literature was 'Pinocchio.' My mother read it to me every day before naptime when I was three or four. The original 'Pinocchio' is terrifying.
There are many talented and worthy writers engaging horror in new, imaginative, and yes, terrifying ways.
I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they're much more liberating because you don't really have to apply a very strict logic.
I always loved scary movies, and my dad was a film professor.
Horror film fans are pretty starved for quality. If you do something thoughtful or if you make something good, they're so thankful for it.
Imagination creates some big monsters.
Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.
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.'
I think that's the real reason, sometimes, that people talk about my stories as being scary, because if you compare what goes on in my stories to what goes on in popular movies and popular songs, it's very mild.
Horror is so often a 'thinkless' genre, sort of considered popcorn movies, but you really put a lot of, not just heart and soul, but a lot of physical energy into it.
