The Witch' was very well planned, but 'The Lighthouse' was so much more so.

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

As a kid, picturing people who grew up in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I walking around in hose and latched shoes in the woods behind my house was an interesting atmospheric thing for me.

My office is just overflowing with books about witches and books about 17th-century animal husbandry and agricultural farm tools from the period.

Parajanov's love for the folk culture is quite infectious. The way that he loves everything on screen, I relate.

If you could custom build new cinemas for every release of every movie, I think filmmakers would work in a lot of different aspect ratios.

If you're a part of this urban intelligentsia, you're not around animals all the time the way people were in the past. So animals become a part of the folklore.

Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga' was huge for me. Seeing how all the creatures were made, looking inside Jabba The Hut, all of the maquettes lined up, building the world... 'This is a job?!' I was always avidly watching special features and behind the scenes stuff.

I certainly grew up in coastal New Hampshire, but I prefer to play in the woods than go to Hampton Beach or whatever.

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

When we learned about Salem at school, the whole thing was confusing. Because the idea of the witch hunt is used as a symbol to describe people searching for something that's basically untrue, it cemented in my mind as a kid that witches weren't real.

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.

Charles Dickens is a lot of fun to read but it's not obscure, and that's just fine.

For some reason, no one wanted to give me money to make a movie written in early modern English that involved a lot of puritans praying -- even if it did involve a witch.

The Wicked Witch of the West really scared me as a child.

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.

Folk tales, fairy tales, religion, the occult -- these are the things I'm most passionate about, even more than cinema. And I'm very passionate about cinema.

I wrote a lot of scripts that were dark and fairy tale-like, but too strange.

Ben Wheatley continues to be one of the most original voices in contemporary film.

The 'Friday the 13th' Jason movies were way too scary for me.