Clive Barker Quotes

I don’t take accusations of selling out lightly.

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.

I remember when I watched ‘Hellraiser’ with my mother. She cried when she saw my name in the opening credits, and I had to tell her that that was the happiest she was going to be for the next two hours.

There’s a lot of places where the image of a cube as a thing of power is pertinent. I don’t know why that is. I don’t have any mythic explanation for it, but it seems to work for people.

If there was a horror movie showing somewhere in Liverpool between 1967 and 1975, I saw it.

I think I’m less and less labelled a ‘horror writer’. The books tend not to go on horror shelves any more, and when they do, I tend to take them off.

I don’t like PG-13 horror movies. I think they’re a contradiction in terms.

‘Underworld’ was my first filmed book. I think there are about seven of my lines in it.

Pinhead needed to say goodbye. He had a farewell speech to make. It was truly as simple as that.

I’m not the expert on the great gameplay. I come in for the character design, monsters, atmosphere. I’m not the technician.

You can plan to be brave – it’s even better if you just try to be brave.

We actually say in ‘Nightbreed,’ ‘God is an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters go.’ There’s a lovely sense in which there’s a simple thesis being played out here. These are things you understand as a child out on the play yard.

Hell is reimagined by every generation. We have to reinvent the worst so that we can reinvent the best.

Nobody cares for the product I, and a host of other horror directors, make.

All I’ve ever wanted to do is darken the day and brighten the night.

When I was looking for financing while making ‘Hellraiser,’ I wish there was a studio like Project Greenlight Digital Studios behind me.

I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else – but I’m absolutely nothing special.

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one’s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.

The ‘Hellraiser’ situation was pretty darn wonderful and very unusual. Nor did I understand how radically unusual the thesis of ‘Nightbreed’ was.

I was always aware of the ticking clock of time, always. I was very aware that I had a lot to do, and I wanted to do those things in the best possible way that I could and probably the biggest way I possibly could.

I love meeting people who’ve read my books. The prime reason to be on the planet is to make things I can show to other people: paintings, books, movies.

My grandfather was a ship’s cook, and he came back from the Far East very often with strange little toys. One of the things he brought back was a puzzle box, which obsessed me for a long time.

The thought of making a movie in which the monsters were the good guys was just financial suicide.

There’s a lot of art and comics and movies being paid homage to by game designers.

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.