Wes Craven Quotes

Horror films don't create fear. They release it.

I like to address the fears of my culture. I believe it's good to face the enemy, for the enemy is fear.

The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency.

The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

All of us have our individual curses, something that we are uncomfortable with and something that we have to deal with, like me making horror films, perhaps.

As long as you keep the audience on the edge of their seats, either scare them or keep them guessing, you can put anything in there that you want.

I believe the cinema is one of our principal forms of art. It is an incredibly powerful way to tell uplifitng stories that can move people to cry with joy and inspire them to reach for the stars.

If you think it, the camera will see it.

I have a lot of fans who are people of color. I think, if nothing else, I kind of understand that sense of being on the outside looking in, culturally.

I'm writing a film called 'Bug.' It's an original script, and it's not about killer insects. It's a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device.

If you're in a theater, people are texting, all around you. You have the little glowing screens everywhere. Think of how annoying that can be.

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that.

Dad, girls don't fall down every time they run.

Something like Nightmare On Elm Street, to me, was kind of an examination of levels of consciousness and the pain of facing the truth, and how easy it is to fall asleep, or want to fall asleep.

It's quite rare that you make something and think that you did something that no-one else had done.

I learned to take the first job that you have in the business that you want to get into. It doesn't matter what that job is, you get your foot in the door.

I came to terms with living mostly in a world of horror pictures or genre pictures.

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films.

I make something I can look at and say, "That's a good piece of work, and there's some terrific directing and acting in it, and you should be proud of it."

I think if anybody had a roll of dice with a lot of money at stake, they would not want Wes Craven and a romantic comedy.

My mother wouldn't even let me read DC Comics.

I came from a very strict background. [So if you want to make a scary movie] if you were raised as a fundamentalist, just pull all the skeletons out of your closet.

But I made him the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security because that added an element of political espionage.

Many, many things are dangerous in our world, commercials and TV are dangerous, and so is the world of sitcoms. But nobody does anything about them because they're turning in alot of money.

A collection of masks, depicting historical figures in life and what I like to call the eternal repose.

I never went to film school, so I never had the chance to be rejected.

I had been a college teacher. I had taught Greek mythology.