Quotes by Scott Derrickson

“I wanted the audience to leave the film with the feeling that they must ask themselves what they believe. Specifically, what do they think about the existence of the spiritual realm?”

“I wanted to portray a man of faith who is skeptical of this sort of phenomenon. It adds to the complexity, so that the audience cant just write him off as a non-religious person. He believes in God, but he also believes wholeheartedly that Father Moore acted negligently and that it led to the death of this young girl.”

“I certainly wasnt interested in inserting my own point of view. The questions themselves are interesting. There are very intelligent people who come down on both sides of the argument about the existence of angels and demons. For me, its impossible to live without reckoning -- honestly and deeply -- with those questions, because how you answer them is going to affect how you live, how you think.”

“Its the difference between art and propaganda or quality entertainment and propaganda. Im not interested in convincing. The pulpit in churches is for that purpose. The pulpit for politicians is for that purpose. It doesnt belong in movies.”

“I think Laura could be more famous if she wanted to be. My impression is she is very selective with what she does.”

“The benefit of being able to flashback during the courtroom scenes to varying perspectives on the possession and exorcism of Emily Rose allows the audience to make up their own mind about what they think may or may not have happened. My intention is to make a film that provokes people to ask themselves what they believe about evil, what they believe about the demonic.”

I dont fear pain or failure anymore because Im too grateful for the pains and failures of my past - they have made me who I am, and most of the good things in my life are a direct result of them in some way.

Corporate America limits the world to consumerism. Science can limit it to the material world. Even religion limits it to a lot of theories that can explain everything. I think we need cinema to break that apart and remind us that were not in control, and we dont understand as much as we think do.

If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, its clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.

For something to be completely evil is to be nothing. Satan has good attributes - intelligence, for instance - but they are corrupted. I cannot reconcile myself emotionally to alternative understandings of evil.

I went to a fundamentalist Christian high school and went to a fundamentalist church, and they were the greatest people; there was an amazing sense of community. The problem is when the messiness of real life enters, and the inflexibility of a moral code cannot cope with the realities of moral relativism.

Im married to a nurse, and she is really, really ardent that - in screenplays or movies that Ive worked on, that all the medical aspects be properly presented. I think that filmmakers ought to be respectful of all fields and not just be lazy and put nonsense in movies because most people wont know the difference.

The more frightening and sort of dark and oppressive a movie is, the more free you are to explore the supernatural and explore faith. The two just somehow go hand-in-hand really nicely.