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It's the idea that anticipation is as scary as anything in a movie could be. People's imagination is the most effective tool in creating terror or dread.

Terror works like a musical composition, so many instruments, all in tune, playing perfectly together to create their desired effect. Sorrow and horror and fear.

Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual - and the soul of a people.

Everybody in their own imagination decides what scary is.

I think if you looked at the kind of ebb and flow of supernatural fiction and horror fiction, it does seem to be more popular in times when we're hammered over the head daily with threats from all angles, very real threats.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

I just think that for a lot of people - not to take the focus off of myself - that feeling of imminent dread, like a cloak of black dust, was always around me.

At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.