Horror is great storytelling with scary elements on top of it, but if you don't have great storytelling, you can have all the scares in the world, but the movie won't work.

The scares are the easier part of scary movies. The hard part of scary movies is what leads up to the scares.

I think good suspense and horror is really about creating situations that are relatable, and throwing a wrench in it and watching how people respond to it.

I think the location is almost as important as casting the leads of the movie. The location on The Purge was crucial to that movie working.

My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'

One thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend I think the worse that they get.

Let's keep making inexpensive movies.

I found that a lot of people ridiculed contemporary art. I decided I wanted to be involved in art everybody could understand.

I love Hitchcock movies. I took a Hitchcock class in college, so I saw all his movies. I wrote papers on his movies.

For some reason, people value being scared less than they value laughing.

I love musicals. I love horror movies and I love art movies.

You don't find Truth, but Truth finds you. ☥

When I look back on the stuff I used to wear, I wonder why somebody didn't try to stop me. Just a friendly warning, "You may regret this, " would have been fine.

'Taking charge of one's life' involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities.

Politics is topical - it's what's happening now, and we can either respond in the present or avoid it.

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

Your religion is where your love is.

Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.

A good director has to be a captain - he has to work with a lot of people every day.

What's good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.

A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges.