Eli Roth Quotations

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

Las Vegas is a 24-hour city. It never stops.

Much of my youth was spent in the parking lot or inside a Dunkin' Donuts.

Horror movies are the best date movies. There's no wondering, 'When do I put my arm around her?'

Possession and exorcism is something that's in every religion and every culture. It's a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go?

'Cabin Fever' was very much inspired by 'The Thing.' It's really a perfect guy's horror movie: There's no love story, it's just straight-up horror. And it's so well-done. It moves at a slow pace, but it's really terrific.

Anytime you're the first to speak out against something, there's going to be a backlash.

You know, I'm from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand.

There's fear in everything, but we can't just succumb to that. We have to suppress it, so we get used to suppressing fear to make it through the our day. Otherwise, we'd become paralyzed by them.

'Eraserhead' is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it.

Even post-WWII, nobody talked about the Holocaust. It wasn't until the '50s that people started talking about it.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that there's no such thing as evil; it's all in your point of view. To one group a suicide bomber is the antichrist and to one he's a hero.

I've always dreamed of having a year-round haunted house.

I think that horror films have a very direct relationship to the time in which they're made. The films that really strike a film with the public are very often reflecting something that everyone, consciously or unconsciously feeling - atomic age, post 9-11, post Iraq war; it's hard to predict what people are going to be afraid of.

I think characters are most terrifying when they're relatable. It's best when your most horrible characters make sense, and are believable. That's when a movie is most terrifying.

I have no tattoos. There's nothing I've even been that into to get a tattoo of it.

Some disaster movies look like you're watching someone else play video games. They're fun but it's not real.

Lucio Fulci is such a massively underrated director. Everyone knows him as the Godfather of Gore.

When people direct insults at me, I can take it.

I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.

My phobias worsen as I get older. I'm scared of flying, driving. I'm terrified of sharks. I'm a germaphobe. But I try to face my fears; I do. Well, most of them.

People want to be disturbed when they go see a horror movie.

The best movies now are called 'thrillers.' Because if you use the word 'horror,' people's associations are straight-to-video crap.

You know, the dirty secret in the Director's Guild is that the average life expectancy of Director's Guild members is 57 years old. The stress level is so high and directors are generally really out of shape, cause they sit in the chair and they eat craft service.

I think that many people are ashamed when they feel afraid. There's this thing in our society that you're not allowed to feel scared. You have to be a man and put on a brave face, but we all have fears.

I always say that no matter what the torture is, or the tool is, first of all it's nothing worse than what's been done already and that wasn't done by the church and the state for over a period of 250 years during the European witch trials.

What is important to me is that people know I respect the business of making movies.

Life is a series of avoiding horrible situations until ultimately you're dead. That's how I feel about things.

I think in a post-9/11 world, with the images coming back from Iraq, everybody knows more and more people who are going over there... the images on the YouTube phenomenon where the violence is so immediate. Direct people need something stronger to respond to. I think that there's definitely a wave of directors - who are labelled the splat pack - who really, really care about making great scary movies.

Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.

I want an iPhone 5, someone said something nasty on twitter, or my boyfriend isn't texting me back, like whatever the thing is that seems so major in your life, when a real disaster hits you suddenly strips it all away and you see what's really important and who you really are.

'Hostel' is that's how I feel about what's going on in Iraq. There's people that just want money and people are being sacrificed for it.

You know, the best thing you can say about a horror film is, 'Don't see it.'

I think filmmakers, in general... There are some awesome, really great filmmakers - but on the whole, filmmakers, actors, I think they are the biggest bunch of whiny, over-paid babies on the planet.

I love movies that are just straight-up exploitation, but the ones that endure and the ones that last are the ones where the filmmakers put in that extra level of thought; after 25 years you put them on in front of an audience, and they'll respond to it and enjoy it.

Quentin Tarantino faced the same backlash when his films came out until eventually people felt they were actually much smarter.

I look at careers like Ben Stiller and think that's a great career to have where you're doing movies that you write and direct, and also act in films, although he's primarily an actor.

If you don’t want to be scared in a horror film, don’t close your eyes. Close your ears.

Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that.

'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.

As a kid, my idols were Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and I get into crazy races with myself. Raimi was 21 when he made movies, and when I didn't get 'Cabin Fever' made that fast I thought I'd failed.

A comedy can actually get funnier and funnier. Even though you know the joke, you enjoy it so much, it's the facial expression, you laugh. The laugh doesn't wear off. It could be with you for thirty years.

If someone gets up and walks out of the movie, it means it's really affected them.

I have the infinite galaxy from '2001 as my screensaver - so if I space out while I'm writing and it goes to screensaver, I can just stare off into the stars.

When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence.

I've always wanted to make a big apocalypse movie. I love 28 Weeks Later, I think it's great but Cell is totally different. It's about people's dependence on technology, the collapse of society and watching everything fall apart. That's something I've always wanted to do, which I believe it can!

It's very flattering to feel like you actually helped create a sub-genre.

I want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they're going to be entertained for 90 minutes.

Well, anytime I make a movie, I like to load it up with more things than you could ever catch on the first viewing.

Quentin Tarantino assistant called me and said: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is you got the part, the bad news is you have to do it." I was like: "Oh Jesus, when am I supposed to do this?" I was prepping Hostel.

What's important for me is staying healthy.

I'm not interested in going after a part. I think if someone wants me for a part and approaches me then I'll take it on a case-by-case basis and see what that part is.

Quentin [Tarantino] called me and said: "Yeah, you've got to be in my movie. You've got to be in Death Proof." But he made me audition. I was like: "Dude, I don't even want to do this..." So I left the casting of Hostel: Part II to drive to Venice, where Quentin was holding his casting, and the person ahead of me was Derek Richardson from Hostel 1 and he was like: "Dude, what are you doing here?" I said: "Don't ask!"

I saw 'Alien' when I was 8 years old. To me, it was like a combination of Jaws and Star Wars, and that's the movie that made me want to be a director.

If I don't come home covered head to toe in fake blood then I haven't done my job as a horror director.

I've realized that I can't multitask in the writing department; I can only kind of do one thing at a time.

You do need an outlet to release all of those fears. You build it up and then, when you go to a movie theater, it's the last place that it's socially acceptable to be terrified. It's saying that, for the next 90 minutes, you're allowed to be afraid and you're not a coward for feeling that way.

I think horror should never be safe, whether it's violent or non violent.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

I want it to be able to hold up in 30 years' time. So, I'm really thinking about everything.

I love historical movies. I want to make a violent medieval epic.

I get a little too obsessive with work.

I have so many different projects, I hear voices in my head - the characters talking all at once - and I have to write to make them stop.

I have control issues. For sure, no question.

I have a strong art-history background.

I generally follow my own compass and make films about what's scaring me.

I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down.

I can think of endless horrible things to do to people!

I want a movie that 30 years from now, people can look back and see it as a reflection of where the culture was at - as a barometer of the culture.

Horror audiences don't need to see some TV actor they're familiar with.

For a long time, I had a crazy girl dating habit.

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins.

Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out.

Chile could work as a double for L.A.; it's very production-friendly and there's terrific talent down there.

My parents love it! They're on set. They make cameos in the movie. My father is a psycho-analyst and a professor at Harvard and he told me how many of the other professors at Harvard have gone and seen it. They love Hostel and they love the thought behind it.

Believe it or not, but I was a camp councilor for three years. I love kids.

Anytime you make a movie, the goal is a wide theatrical release, with the right distributor.

Shooting at Quentin Tarantino movie was like a masterclass in directing. Although I went back literally right into rehearsal, started shooting... while I was doing it I had to write my Grindhouse trailer and I added two days of shooting. My brother was producing Hostel and the Grindhouse trailer and I was like: "Gabe, just figure this out!"

Horror movies are the best date movies. There's no wondering , 'When do I put my arm around her?'

I love movies. I mean, I really, really love movies.

I think in the late '80s and early '90s horror was dead.

If you are having fun on the set, you are not getting things done.

As a kid, I was the neighbourhood baby-sitter - very responsible, always in charge.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

Movie stars need to retain some of that mystique if you are a big movie star.

I never put out a vanilla edition of a DVD.

All the copycat movies were always PG-13 and people said: "Nobody wants violence."

The one negative to horror is that it's always law of diminishing returns. When you go in the funhouse, the ride is never scary the second time. You will never have that pure experience as when you first watch it.

Look at comic books. It used to be something that only geeks were into. And now it's everywhere.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks.

So when I was beating the guy, I started thinking, 'What if I was Hannah Montana?' . . . And little do they know that that's why I look so insane . . . I'm torturing myself with thoughts of, 'How could I actually pull off being a high school student and a pop star at night?'

For the fee of $10,000, anyone could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human to kill. The concept made me nauseous. But it also felt real, and rang bells with my more cynical side.

It's just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It's never going to be as good as the first one.

I want to have an ending where people say: "That's the most shocking ending I've ever seen in a mainstream horror film."

Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things.

When I was 22, I had this horrible psoriasis outbreak. It was all over my legs, I couldn't walk because my legs were cracked and bleeding. Weird things like that can happen to your body.

I felt people responded to two things. One, obviously, is the gore and the scenes like the eye gauging.

The scariest people are usually the sweetest.

The film, 'Aftershock,' for me is really about how the minor problems in life that we think are so major ultimately mean nothing when a tragedy happens, when a real problem happens.