Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
Interpretation
Horror uniquely elicits strong, instinctive reactions from its audience.
This quote suggests that horror as a genre stands apart from others in its ability to elicit immediate and intense emotional responses from people. Unlike other genres that may engage the intellect or evoke a more measured emotional reaction, horror taps into primal fears and instincts, creating a visceral experience that can be felt physically and emotionally.
In practice
During a film discussion or horror movie night, you could use this quote to highlight the unique impact of horror films.
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 figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.
Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.
Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.
Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.
With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.
I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.
I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.
You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you
Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.
Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.
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