Quotes from George A. Romero

'Night of the Living Dead,' then 'Dawn of the Dead' is a few weeks later, 'Day of the Dead' months later, and 'Land of the Dead' is three years later. Each one spoke about a different decade and was stylistically different.

I won't say I'm uncompromising, but I won't compromise just for the hell of it.

Neighbors are frightening enough when they're alive.

The main thing people took from 'Night of the Living Dead' was that it was a racial statement movie, and that was completely unintended.

Back then, in 1968, everything was suspect - family, government, and obviously the family unit in 'Night of the Living Dead' completely collapses. That's what we were focused on.

I'm telling you, man, after I did 'Land of the Dead,' which Mark Canton produced, Universal picked it up, and I had to use stars. I didn't think I needed stars - Dennis Hopper was in it. I loved him. We hung out. I loved him, but his cigar budget was more than we paid for the entire budget of 'Night of the Living Dead.'

A lot of my friends are people who do horror films: Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Stephen King.

I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense.

Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is.

I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.

A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.

My film collection is all oldies.

You can get an audience no matter what your opinion is.

My stuff is my stuff. I do it for my own reasons, using my own peculiar set of guidelines.

First of all, in the old days, if you wanted to show someone getting shot on film, all you could do was place an effect in the original take. And if you wanted to brighten somebody's face and leave the rest of the room dark, that was a very expensive process.

As great as Ed is, the wisdom out here is that he can't carry a movie. They'll pay him $3 million to be the second banana in Julia Roberts things. But they won't put up $3 million for an Ed Harris movie.

I like to use horror as allegory.

Most of my stuff was sort of of-the-time. 'The Crazies' was, basically, we were angry about Vietnam, and it had a reason for being.

Movies are about escape.

I'm more alarmed by people reacting violently to the violence in my films than I am by the violence in films.

Ever since 'Lassie' and 'Old Yeller', I won't watch animal movies. Animals in movies always die.

For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings - by classmates, not the nuns - was to be the funny guy.