I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.

You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home... Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism.

I have never read horror, nor do I consider The Exorcist to be such, but rather as a suspenseful supernatural detective story, or paranormal police procedural.

But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans.

The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.

What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night

I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.

I get cassettes near Academy Award time of every movie that's made that thinks it has some kind of chance for a nomination - that's when I watch my movies

God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.

And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence.

Procrastination is what we often call 'resistance.

I love the process of creating a character; someone entirely different from myself, and depicting it, either on stage or screen.

Every fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying.

If you're an employer, you want to hire an employee who'll do their job, not do your bidding.

All true knowledge of God is born out of obedience.

If a man knows what he wants, then he is in a position to decide that he will get it. This is faith. The determined decision of a man with desire.

God and other artists are always a little obscure.

To create is not to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.

The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race.

Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.