John Carpenter Quotes

“A life jacket will at least keep you floating.”

“Horror is a reaction; it's not a genre.”

“Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.”

“I don't want to be in the mainstream. I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble.”

“I don't watch my films. I've seen 'em enough after cutting them and putting the music on. I don't ever want to see them again.”

“If there was one secret way of doing a horror movie then everybody would be doing it.”

“In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the U.S., I'm a bum.”

“Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other. They’re us with hats on. The zombies in George Romero’s movies are us. They’re hungry. Monsters are us, the dangerous parts of us. The part that wants to destroy; the part of us with the reptile brain. The part of us that’s vicious and cruel. We express these in our stories as these monsters out there.”

“My years in the business have taught me not to worry about what you can’t control.”

“The cinema narrative has not changed that much since the silent film.”

“To make Michael Myers frightening, I had him walk like a man, not a monster.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a movie director, and I got to be a movie director. I lived my f*cking dream, you can't get better than that. That's the ultimate.”

“When you have no money, you need invention.”