"Gather experience. . . Look at what you should not look at. A feeling of anxiety is the sure and certain evidence that you should do this." Barker performed a disection at a funeral home, for the sake of understanding death at close hand. |
At best you can hold death at bay, you can pretend it isn't there; but to deny it totally is a sickness. And I think that horror fiction is one of the ways to approach these problems, and, perversely perhaps, to enjoy a vicarious confrontation with them. |
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work. |
But I think humans are innately religious as a species, so you don't need a specific excuse for examining the perversely unholy. |
Here is a list of fearful things: The jaws of sharks, a vulture's wings, The rabid bite of the dog's of war, The voice of one who went before. But most of all the mirror's gaze, which counts us out our numbered days. |
I do love these events. It is a chance to interact in a direct and personal way. So when I do agree to attend such an event, I wholeheartedly throw myself headlong into it. |
I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else - but I'm absolutely nothing special. |
I wrote none of these books. I made none of these films. Nor drew the drawings, nor opined at such length on death, sex and the human condition. |
I'm a great dog fanatic. My own dog died a little while ago and I take it very personally when things die - it's a major offence. |
I've always thought that the most extraordinary special effect you could do is to buy a child at the moment of its birth, sit it on a little chair and say, "You'll have three score years and ten," and take a photograph every minute. |
I've never felt so good in my life, |
I've never worked where it was hard to be gay. Besides, being gay is a spectacular irrelevance to getting on with your life. |
It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. |
It's irritating, because I would like to make movies that were as unrelenting and as explicit in their metaphysical, sexual and violent imagery as the stories. But with the way censorship is at present, there's no way you can do that. |
My imagination is my polestar; I steer by that. |