Scare Quotations

As we saw in the Queen's Speech, anti-social behaviour - a phenomenon that I believe to be a genuine worry that is also being fed by a lot of scare stories - is the political theme of the moment.

I love the fact that little kids think I'm a witch. A mum might come over and say 'I'm sorry to disturb you, but my daughter thinks you're in 'Harry Potter.' I'll say 'That's cool' and take the kid aside and say, 'I'm a witch. If you don't listen to your mum, I'm going to haunt you!' It's brilliant. I can scare kids into doing their homework.

Don't set out to make a scary movie and then flinch every time you're supposed to scare somebody because you're afraid of being MPAA or you're afraid of your own demons or whatever.

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.

It's as much fun to scare as to be scared.

Why would you be afraid of death? It would be an inconvenience. I have a lot of undone things and it's bound to get in the way. But, no, it doesn't scare me at all.

Don't let what you don't know scare you, because it can become your greatest asset. And if you do things without knowing how they have always been done, you're guaranteed to do them differently.

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

I never thought I'd reach 21. I used to feel that was old, but growing old doesn't scare me anymore. I just want to have done something super special and have had someone to do it with.

I'm not a big horror movie fan. I am afraid of them; they scare me.

I'm not sure anyone goes through a cancer scare unchanged. I know it changed me in so many ways. But I was fortunate to have had a rare cancer that's slow-growing and one that allowed me to skip the chemical cocktails that would have put me into early menopause.

The way you deal with a scare is the way you deal with a laugh. The timing has to be perfect. When you're dealing with fear or laughter - emotions that happen spontaneously - you hope it's working. But in the moment, you really have no idea.

Scare answers to scare, and force begets force, until at length it comes to be seen that we are racing one against another after a phantom security which continually vanishes as we approach.

I like pushing the envelope. I like pushing myself and the audience, whether it's a TV show or live. I like to throw people over the edge of the cliff and scare the wits out of them, but then pull them back and make them safe.

I am really easy to scare, and I dont enjoy watching spooky films.

The one thing that scares me the most is failing. It scares me that one day I wont be at this level. But while Im here and while Im having success early, Im trying to do everything to stay on this level.

There's nothing like overcoming something that scares you so much. Nothing feels better.

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.

What I've found - and the older I get, the more I understand this and stand behind it - is, my whole life has been an exploration of telling the truth. It's scary to be truthful, and it's scary to reveal yourself, and I'm very attracted to doing things that scare me.

I hope I'm going to act for the rest of my life. What scares me is that if I get a big head, my mum said she would take me out of the business instantly - and if you knew my mum, she would do it!

Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.

Most horror films fail to scare me. I think "The Ring" plays more as a psychological thriller. It's smarter, there's more character development and some of the themes explored go a little deeper.

But I love being scared. I think you're brave only when you do things that scare you. I've always used fear as a motivator. I'm not sure why.

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

I've earned all these years on my face. I don't want to be a liar if in five or 10 years I do get some Botox, but needles in the face scare me, so I don't really know if I am ever going to do that.

Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death.

No matter what your profession is, it's good to scare yourself a little from time to time! It's crucial to keep challenging yourself and to learn from people who are more accomplished than you are.

A good horror movie - it doesn't matter how many comedy horror films there have been before. Doesn't matter how much you think it's going to be funny. A good horror movie will scare the hell out of you... the moment you sit down and you start being exposed to that story, it's going to freeze your blood.

The first and great commandment is: Don't let them scare you.

I just love expanding my horizons and growing as an artist. The only way you get to do that is by doing something that scares you or takes you out of your comfort zone.

Horror movies have never been my thing. I love psychological thrillers like 'The Exorcist', 'The Shining', even though they scare the living daylights out of me.

I would say what scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I'm really not lovable, that I'm not worthy of being loved. That there's something fundamentally wrong with me.

If something scares me, then I have to do it.

I don't need to scare the other athletes. When I'm running, I will scare them.

Words like feminism or democracy scare me. They are words with barnacles on them, and you can't see what's underneath.

I don't enjoy the boo scare when you're watching a movie and then suddenly there's a big shark on the screen. The only thing they're doing is catching you off guard.

Im massively scared of spiders. Even small ones scare the life out of me.

What keeps this industry challenging as an actor is that you never know how something will turn out. The ups and downs are constant. You're never just smoothly sailing along. You're always going to be on loose footing. That's what ultimately now I expect and accept and that doesn't scare me as much.

When the news wants to tell you something is important, they put dramatic theme music behind it. They scare you into watching the story.

I thought 'Twinkies' was just a word for 'cookies,' not a specific thing. They kind of scare me a little bit because they last forever.

Horror movies scare me. I don't really watch them. I'm not a big horror genre fan. I like certain classic horror - like 'Alien', 'Jaws', 'The Exorcist', stuff like that.

It scares you: all the noise, the rattling, the shaking. But the look on everybody's face when you're finished and packing, it's the best smile in the world; and there's nobody hurt, and the well's under control.

It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.

All the textbooks talk about avoidance as a classic hallmark of anxiety disorder. So you need a therapist who is sympathetic and understanding but will also push you to do precisely the things that scare you.

And besides, I'm so in Dutch with my neighbors here that I thought that was better than getting them all upset with what might be a fake bomb scare where they'd have to clear out the whole neighborhood.

Actually, I have this random fear, and it's of bees and wasps. Bees and wasps actually scare me just a little bit. I'd rather have a snake or a crocodile, yes... I appreciate them, and I love them, but I have a slight fear.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

Ghostly things don't really scare me, but they really intrigue me.

I don't watch horror movies because they scare me!

A label's typical plan would be to put something out that's safer and get fans, and then push buttons, but my idea is to push buttons first, scare off the people who are gonna be scared off, and then the right people will like you for who you really are, and stay with you.

I've got big feet, so filling someone else's big shoes doesn't scare me.

The physical part of comedy is as hard as a lot of action movies. It scares me, but in a way that I like.

And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.

In my sports or workout life, I like to prove to myself I can do something, whether it's a half marathon or whatever it is. I like to take challenges that scare me because then once we've accomplished it, we feel stronger.

Anthology shows as a whole scare people. The networks can't quite get their heads around it.

'The Omen,' 'The Exorcist,' those movies for me are the quintessential horror movies that still scare me as an adult.

It's really hard to scare people on network television. You've got to be smart about it. You've got to parcel out the scares.

I'm a firm believer in doing things that scare you

Today, if you were to look at my CD collection, it might scare some people.

I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me.

When I was a kid, I used to love it when one of my friends would jump out from behind a door and try to scare me. I always did the same thing in response.

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

The guys on 'Game of Thrones' trust me implicitly to take care of the action stuff. I don't mess with their drama, but they allow me to come up with ideas like 'Hey, what if the giant had a bow? And what if he shot some guy off the wall?' With 'Constantine,' too, they really trust me to scare the audience.

Obviously, when I had the scare with the blood clots, I mean, that's the kind of thing that you don't want to have happen, obviously, and you worry about what it means for the rest of your career.

The first time I ever met Stephen King, he came up to me, and we went to shake hands, and he had, like, this fake rubber rat that he kind of, you know, shook at me. You know, and I said, 'No, this is a cliche - this can't be. Stephen King is trying to scare me with a fake rat?' It was just really weird.

I love to be scared. Not, 'Hey, I think I smell smoke...' scared, but creepy, paranoid, what's-that-out-there-in-the-dark, ghost story scared. It's no surprise that I was the girl who got invited to the slumber parties because I could be counted on to tell a tale to scare the bejesus out of you.

Nothing scares me more than people with some doll collection.

I'm attracted to things that scare me, like 'Psycho,' my favorite Hitchcock movie.

I'm a guy who likes to watch something cool, creepy and suspenseful and there is no show to watch as an adult that would scare me at for even four seconds.

I'd seen musicians act, and it scares me. And they make more money than me.

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

The devil's main purpose is not to scare us, in a horror-movie way; when we're scared of him, we're alert to him, and that might undermine his plans. Instead, he wants to quietly, subtly lure us into stepping away from God.

I wish I could sing. I love singers, but I am way too shy. Scares the hell out of me.

Gory stuff can be shocking but it doesn't really scare me. I'd say the kind of stuff that gets under my skin is the unknown. You hear a knock behind a wall and you don't know what it is. Is there something there or not?

I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.

There's nobody in the business strong enough to scare me.

Age is just a number, and I know so many women who look fabulous at 40, 50 and 60 so it doesn't scare me. It's inevitable - I will get older, and the wrinkles will come, but I'm not that bothered.

I scare the neighbors, the kids... They don't come to my house for trick-or-treating, trust me. I had to buy exactly zero amount of dollars worth of candy for the past couple of years.

I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.

So, for the most part, I really like when I read a scene that scares me and makes me sweat a little bit, thinking about doing it. That's usually a good sign to me.

Girls are scary. Large groups of girls scare the crap out of me.

I've always been aware that the image you patiently construct for an entire career can be ruined in a minute. It scares you a bit, but that's the way things are.

I'll tell you what me scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic bottles and these things. Why does my water have to be in a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean. And I don't know, I'm just terrified with the proliferation of plastic.

My wife is my first audience. She's a tough lady, so I can't say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.

Good parts should always scare you a little bit, and good parts... you might not get advice to do them.

I love finding things that scare me and doing them. That's how you grow.

Chief Keef scares me. Not him specifically, but just the culture that he represents.

The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.

I can hide, and my husband's just terrible at finding me. I do like to jump out from behind doors and scare him.

It scares me to think that one day I'm not going to be in school anymore.

I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as 'I'm cool, look at how many e-mails I get.' That perception doesn't scare me, because I know who I am.

To be honest, marriage doesn't scare me and that, it's just once you've been together for so long, if you haven't got any kids it's just a big expensive day out for everyone else to enjoy, isn't it?

I would love to be employed for the rest of my life... But what I would want to do is things that would frighten me, things that would scare me. I've never done that before; can I do that, can I show them that I can do it?

I'm not great at dealing with death, I have to say. I find death very hard: my mum, my dad, Sid Vicious. I'm not a monster; I feel it and it scares me. One death at a time, please, is all my heart will bear.

In the 1950s, we had all these B-grade science-fiction movies. The point was to scare the public and get them to buy popcorn. No attempt was made to create movies that were somewhat inherent to the truth.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

The 'public' scares me, but people I trust.

I work on the floor with them. Lab coats scare them, so for the animals, it's better to wear regular clothes.