Writer

Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

My life is in the art that I make, and I'm very happy with it.

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

You can plan to be brave - it's even better if you just try to be brave.

I'm a great dog fanatic. My own dog died a little while ago and I take it very personally when things die - it's a major offence.

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

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.

I wanted to fold into the 'Hellraiser' narrative something about the guy - the Frenchman Lemarchand - who made the mysterious box, which raises Pinhead. I figured, 'Well, what would have happened to him?' He might well have been taken to Devil's Island, and I thought that would be a pretty cool place to start the movie.

One of the things I'm trying to do over and over again in my books is create new mythologies, create new ways to understand the complexity of the world. I think what mythology does is impress upon chaotic experience the patterns, hierarchies and shapes which allow us to interpret the chaos and make fresh sense of it.

Interestingly, although the 'Books of Blood' were greeted with cries of righteous horror - and smirks - I didn't think of them as being particularly excessive. God knows what I did think was excessive at the time, but I didn't think they were.

Neil Gaiman is a star. He constructs stories like some demented cook might make a wedding cake, building layer upon layer, including all kinds of sweet and sour in the mix.

We live in the Age of the Next New Thing; we're assaulted day and night by tastemakers telling us what the next hit will be, the next style, the next cool.

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

'Hellraiser' was what 'Hellraiser' was. It was a $900k movie, and there wasn't anything I would have done differently. But 'Nightbreed' was taken away from me. It was thought that its meaning wasn't... Its meaning didn't chime with the producers.

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 take accusations of selling out lightly.

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