Eli Roth quotes:

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I have control issues. For sure, no question.

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.

What's important for me is staying healthy.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.

One of the great joys of life, now that you can afford a nice suit, is getting one for free. That's why I like to do press tours - I always say making movies is just an excuse to get free clothing.

When you make a film for a million and a half dollars and it opens at 20 million, the next question out of everyone's mouth is, 'When's the next one, when's the next one, when's the next one?'

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

I think in life we get very caught up in the minutia and, unfortunately, it generally takes some sort of tragedy in your life to put things in perspective.

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

As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I've always been a fan of 3D, going back to movies in the '50s. I was part of the early '80s 3D craze, which was coming at you in Jaws 3D, so I've always wanted to make a 3D film.

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.

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.

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

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

Imagine trying to relive your worst break-up, your worst fight, the most painful death of a loved one, and just really relive it step by step, and bring it up and apply it to the scene you're in.

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

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 the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. If someone hunts a lion, it's like: "Wow, they're brave!" But if they're hunting a deer it's like: "That poor deer!" I know that. I know that guys getting killed is horrible but people have seen it before. You've seen The Evil Dead. With girls, it's like: "I don't want to see that happening..." I know that.

I've always wanted to be involved in an exorcism movie. But I thought, "How do you make something scarier than The Exorcist?" The answer is you don't. But that doesn't mean you can't make something that is original and interesting.

There's something very scary about exposing yourself on camera, knowing that you're going to be put on thousands of screens around the world for everyone to judge, but there's also something very thrilling and exciting about it.

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

I was listening to music to kind of pump myself up and get psyched up, like I was listening to Iron Maiden and Misfits and Dead Kennedys, and it was like my '80s Massachusetts parking-lot heavy metal and Guns N' Roses.

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?'

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

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.

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 always feel that there's no violence in a movie - it's not real, it's a magic trick. Nobody is really dying. In fact, the people that die in my movies have gone on to become extremely successful!

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.

I love movies that have that resonating scare, that really get under your skin and make you think.

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

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?

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

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.

Twitter is wonderful. You can kill rumours instantly.

Troll 2' is one of the rare sequels where you don't have to waste time watching the first one, since the films have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

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

The scariest people are usually the sweetest.

With Hostel II I thought I had a very, very strong female audience so I'm going to make a movie that's going to appeal to them. The guys will love it, they'll have their moments. But there'll be a lot more male nudity in this one. I have a lot of sausage in this one!

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!"

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.

I never put out a vanilla edition of a DVD.

We live in an age now where so many people watch movies based on what Netflix recommends. It learns your taste and they really understand viewer habits.

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.

When someone throws up while watching one of your movies, it's like a standing ovation.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that's not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that's totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that's in other languages and not using stars and using real people - things that they generally don't do in mainstream films.

There's a crazy, false notion that audiences are not patient or will not watch a story, that you have to put in a scare every ten minutes. But I always thought that was insane.

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

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.

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

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.

The difference is in Hostel it's in the theatre - it's in public but it's in a private place. You have to actively make a choice to want to go see it. It's not being forced on anyone. Whereas 24 you can be flipping channels and it's right there in your living room. Anyone has access to that. But that just shows how mainstream it is and how people are seeing this stuff on YouTube. People are scared of it. This is a subject matter that everyone's talking about and everyone's thinking about, particularly in American culture.

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.

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

Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far.

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

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.

I have a strong art-history background.

I get a little too obsessive with work.

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 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.

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

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!"

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

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.

I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.

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

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

When I was filming the death scene [in Inglourious Basterds], and I'm killing somebody, I had to work myself up.

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

'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.

'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.

When I'm filming a kill scene [as a director], I just get happier and happier as we chop up body parts.

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