We grew up on Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, Samuel Beckett. You're making something about men on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you're going to look to those guys.

You can't train a goat. You can't. You can't. So I don't recommend making a movie with a goat in a major role to anyone.

Basically, I was always disappointed that the witches weren't real when we learned about the Salem witch trials.

The more you try to turn away from darkness, the more darkness is right against your back.

Every actor demands different things. Every human being you come in contact with in your life, you have to deal with in slightly different ways.

I don't get a lot of writer's block, because it's all based on research. I just start looking through my notes, and I can write garbage for days - I mean, some of it ends up being good.

People return to the same things. Charles Dickens wrote the same story a million times - and 'A Christmas Carol.'

Being a wannabe auteur and my favorite filmmakers being part of the dead canon of European, Japanese art-house masters, I want to say that I don't want to care about genre and how it's limiting and all of that stuff.

The Lighthouse' isn't scary. A few people have said it is, but I don't think it is.

Haxan' is really cool. There are a lot of things about it that are just great.

If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good.

Cinemascope has become synonymous with 'epic,' and absolutely if you're shooting armies and certain kinds of vast landscapes, you do want that panoramic canvas to work on. But if you look at art history there's not a whole lot of epic paintings that are in that aspect ratio.

It's pretty easy to learn about lighthouses because there's a lot of lighthouse enthusiasts. Really, there's lots of books about it, and it's fairly easy to find lighthouse keepers' journals and logbooks.

Since the release of 'The Witch,' I'm actually much more warm towards bad horror movies than I was making 'The Witch.'

I enjoy the act of research. I'm researching as a means to an end, but I literally just enjoy reading about how people lived in the past and understanding it better.

I bow down to the altar of genre, because it allowed me to get 'The Witch' financed.

Willem Dafoe is a huge hero of mine.

What's so interesting to me about history is - what's interesting to anyone - is how humans are the same. Their belief systems were so different. They had different metaphysical truths than we do. And yet we're the same.

I grew up in New England, and the woods behind my house seemed haunted by New England's past.

Honestly, if I could shoot everything in 1:33, I would.

As a second-time director you don't want to be working with someone who's a star that wants you to get down and kiss their feet.

Certainly as a director you want to be working with people who are on the same page as you and that you can trust and get along with.

Nosferatu' has a very close, magical connection for me.

I'm trying to communicate with other people about humanity and stuff, man!