"Gather experience. . . Look at what you should not look at. A feeling of anxiety is the sure and certain evidence that you should do this." Barker performed a disection at a funeral home, for the sake of understanding death at close hand.

To you who have never died, may I say: Welcome to the world!.

Here is a list of terrible things,
The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings
The rabid bite of the dogs of war,
The voice of one who went before,
But most of all the mirror's gaze,
Which counts us out our numbered days.

I say 'spectacle' rather than 'story' because in the end, it isn't the intricacies of narrative that draw us to horror films. When it's there, I'm grateful for the director's skill at telling an exquisitely nuanced tale filled with psychological insight, but it is the spectacles that I take home with me.

One of the things I'm trying to do over and over again in my books is create new mythologies, create new ways to understand the complexity of the world. I think what mythology does is impress upon chaotic experience the patterns, hierarchies and shapes which allow us to interpret the chaos and make fresh sense of it.

Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.