Quotes from William Peter Blatty

I tried to make every bit of it as creepy as I could. And I had the same response you do. I feel the same way. The hospital scenes, that procedure was so real.

I get cassettes near Academy Award time of every movie that's made that thinks it has some kind of chance for a nomination - that's when I watch my movies

Horror does not interest me, and so I know little of its practicioners, old or current.

Well, the research into it affected me. And the novel, it very much strengthened my faith.

I've been campaigning like anything for restoring these changes. For 27 years. I wrote a book about it, well, a portion of the book was devoted to these scenes and why they should have been in the movie.

The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.

When the filter is weakened by a powerful drug, what we see is not delusion but the truth.

For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love.

I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.

Bantam Press. And they commissioned me to write it. And when that was completed, they sold it to Harper and Row. And then I put it out to every movie studio in town. And they all turned it down.

I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.

I lived in Georgetown in the late '70s about four houses down from the steps.

I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious.