Clive Barker

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.

I say 'spectacle' rather than 'story' because in the end, it isn't the intricacies of narrative that draw us to horror films. When it's there, I'm grateful for the director's skill at telling an exquisitely nuanced tale filled with psychological insight, but it is the spectacles that I take home with me.

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.

I used to think that you'd open the door, and there was Narnia. Increasingly, I think it's all around us.

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

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.

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

Books should make somebody look at how they feel, be honest with themselves.

I've got deeper journeys to take. Metaphysical journeys. Journeys to see Christ. Shaman journeys. It's what I've been elected by God to do.

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

I love the idea of stories being about great beginnings and terrible endings.