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.
Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.
I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don't even know I'm working on. It's a free lunch. A free dinner. I don't know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.
In a way, editing is not unlike the movies. The best books, just like the best movies, are a collaboration. They're only as good as the compromise made between the artists involved.
Black artists are encouraged to explore their identity but are then pigeonholed according to their ethnicity. We may have seen the decline of old racism, but we are witnessing a new kind of racialising.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.