c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am inundated with feeling. I feel like a pinball machine on tilt. All the buzzers are ringing, lights are flashing, and I am about to fry my circuits. Nothing is coming in,and nothing is going out. I feel electrified. The wires ignited, sparked, and fizzled. I want it all to slow down. I go right to the water to douse my flame. I immerse myself in the hot water. I want to wash the smells off my body. I can smell Isabella's hair, her breath, and her child vaginal scent. My hair smells of smoke,and I want to wash Francis off me.
— Holly A. Smith, Fire of the Five Hearts: A Memoir of Treating Incest
She holds you like a whore in the night, but she'll take your soul and not think twice.
— Micheal Rivers, The Black Witch
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
No one will ever write a horror novel as scary as reading about my symptoms on WebMD.
— John Raptor
Chapter 4,‘Organised abuse and the pleasures of disbelief’, uses Zizek’s (1991) insights into cite political role of enjoyment to analyse the hyperbole and scorn that has characterised the sceptical account of organised and ritualistic abuse. The central argument of this chapter is that organised abuse has come to public attention primarily as a subject of ridicule within the highly partisan writings of journalists, academics and activists aligned with advocacy groups for people accused of sexual abuse. Whilst highlighting the pervasive misrepresentations that characterise these accounts, the chapter also implicates media consumers in the production of ignorance and disdain in relation to organised abuse and women’s and children’s accounts of sexual abuse more generally.
— Michael Salter, Organised  Sexual Abuse
Those who did better were those who didn't wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals.
— Sheri  Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
I'm a man of few words, most of them end in off!
— Kensington Gore
Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you'd think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this don't understand, he thought. They don't realize that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip.
— Ryū Murakami, Piercing
So exquisitely perfect was the darkness of the heavens above that one would have difficulty believing it was a prison to the passengers and crew of The Black Witch.
— Micheal Rivers, The Black Witch
Between the world we seeand the things we fear, there are doors. When they are opened, nightmares become reality.
— A Haunting
Don't Fear the Reaper.
— Rae Hachton, Eternally
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off.
— Stephen King
Person 1: "Stay back....I have a demon inside of me."Person 2: "Let me get closer...I have a hell inside me where your demons can live."(from Dark Winter, #2 - out Halloween 2014)
— John    Hennessy
Our lives are defined by fear from the very time we are born to the time we bid adieu to this material world.
— Faraaz Kazi, The Other Side
Some girls are sweeter… Others have a tinge of bitterness… It is as if I can smell their souls. Their experiences and relationships are painted in warm, sour crimson.
— Katlyn Charlesworth, The Beauty Mark
When am I going to learn to stop questioning authority and just eat the Soylent Green?
— Red Tash, This Brilliant Darkness
He was too damn old to run now, too tired of that romantic idea of freedom that infected the heads of the young and later killed most of them with crushing disappointment. The Cassinis had always made sure he was just comfortable enough to want to sit tight and not risk the generosities they’d afforded him, and the older he got, the more comfortable he became. Comfort had a way of killing the romance in just about everybody.
— Allison M. Dickson, Strings
He hurried back. Walls seemed to shift and advance. Right here, it must be. Wasn’t this passage too short? No, it wasn’t a wall that blocked his way, only fog. The fog retreated before him—then at once yielded up a wall. Staggering crimson letters caught in the web of graffiti spelled KILLER.
— Ramsey Campbell, The Face That Must Die
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
— Eric Garner, Thinking Skills - Using Your Brain in the Information Age
Wielding a hammer, however, you’re at the very heart of the experience, being flooded with wonderful sensations that simply can’t be yours if you use a firearm. Now, you might be asking yourself how I came to discover the splendors of hammer attack. I’ll tell you. You won’t want to hear it, though.
— Richard Laymon, The Museum of Horrors
He slammed the door and ran blindly down the corridor, grabbing at handles. What exactly had he seen? They had been eating with their bare hands, but somehow the only thought he could hold on to was a kind of sickened gratitude that he had been unable to see their faces.
— Ramsey Campbell, Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991
He was six years old this time, and ancient.
— Red Tash, This Brilliant Darkness
The crying wailed, somewhere beneath the planks. Several sweeps of the light showed that the cellar was otherwise deserted. Though the face mouthed behind him, he ventured down. For God’s sake, get it over with; he knew he would never dare return.
— Ramsey Campbell, Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991
It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them the whole long boring story of how he’d gotten it at an estate sale in Hollywood. Some bimbo actress from the silent-screen days had supposedly slit her wrists while she was in the thing. ‘Cashed in her chips,’ Harold liked to say. ‘In this very tub.
— Richard Laymon, Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror
Unlike the rest he had seen of the bungalow, the hall beyond the door was dark. He could see the glimmer of three doors and several framed photographs lined up along the walls. The sound of flies was louder, though they didn’t seem to be in the hall itself. Now that he was closer they sounded even more like someone groaning feebly, and the rotten smell was stronger too.
— Ramsey Campbell, Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991
It's safe to say that 'Horror,' as a fictional genre, has claim to it's own canon. There is a definite history that can be traced back to the origins of human language, both orally and written, and now multimedia based. We at this point, have access to the full gambit of 'genre' Horror in all its hybrid forms (electronically at least). Sub-genres ensure that Horror can and will multiply in its complexities and evolve along with human fears.
— William   Cook, Blood Related
Be less than what you are so that you can become more.” ― Joseph Delaney, The Spook's Sacrifice
— Joseph Delaney, The Spook's Sacrifice
He looked up at the round, stained glass window in front of him, a blurred kaleidoscope backlit in the morning sun. It glowed. The color of heaven. Of her hair. He sat back and cracked open the dry, leather cover of a pew Bible, and a mixture of sweat and tears christened its pristine pages.
— Red Tash, This Brilliant Darkness
A man’s principles are his own. Man starts flip-flopping on what he believes based on outside influences and he may as well run for congress.
— J.J. Zep, Dead On My Feet
My family has a Christmas tradition: Every year, they kill my mom.
— James Aquilone, At Year's End
The dead have existed for as long as the living, give or take a few years. But what good has that done them?
— James Aquilone, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Volume 5 #4
Oh, I love you, June, I really do. It's just that you sounded so...twat-ish just then.
— Red Tash, This Brilliant Darkness
As she felt his fangs against her neck, she was in another world.	There was screaming. A woman was somewhere in agony. Everything was black, and the tormented scream was overwhelming, echoing through the emptiness. After the screaming subsided, there was panting, loud and steady, and it wasn’t as dark anymore. There was a room visible now, in a reddish light. A pale man with black hair hovered over a woman dressed in white. She lay on a bed, looking disheveled and sweaty. Her brown-black hair clung to her wet forehead and shoulders. She was covered in blood. The man sat next to her, and held her close to him. He stroked her hair as her chest heaved desperately. 	“I love you, my dearest Katerina,” he said, cradling her in his strong arms. “Soon, we’ll be together forever.” Everything faded to black once more, and the woman stopped breathing. All was silent and still.
— Dawn Bonney, Crimson
Woodward and Bernstein,” Jared said from seemingly nowhere.“What?”“They were just two reporters. Yet, they broke the Watergate scandal. They toppled an administration. That’s us.”“We’re Woodward and Bernstein.” Alec said, pointing between him and Jared.“Woodward, Bernstein, and Lucy,” Lucy corrected.
— Adrian W. Lilly, The Wolf at His Door
Things had gone badly at Hell House, although not quite as horribly as the '31 investigation. At least this time there were survivors, if you wanted to call being reduced to catatonia and raving lunacy 'surviving'.
— Nancy A. Collins, Return to Hell House
Time snapped and Hagerty found himself speeding toward the woman in the straitjacket. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her off the corpse and held her at arm's length. He caught a glimpse of Kalish's face and the shredded mess where his throat should have been.
— Nancy A. Collins, Sunglasses After Dark
These friends - and he laid his hand on some of the books - have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
You’re beautiful when you do that.”She dropped her gaze to his. “What’s that?”“Smile.
— Airicka Phoenix, Betraying Innocence
The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Would you teach me, Seth?’Seth smiled and leaned back in his seat. ‘You do realise, of course, that you have no idea what you ask of me?’ Seth replied after a moment.‘Of course,’ Christopher replied quietly. ‘Could you tell me?’‘No. That is the problem you see,’ Seth said. ‘Magic is something you can never prepare someone for. Magic will make you, Christopher. It will find all the secret empty places of longing in you and fill them more surely than any other love. And magic will break your heart.’ A slight, rather sad smile crossed Christopher’s face for a moment. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You think your heart is already broken, you think that this crooked and winding way is the only path left for you now. But you’re wrong. The heart breaks like every wave on the beach and there’s a darkness you’ll have to pass through that you can’t even see from where you are now.
— Lee  Morgan, Wooing the Echo
I had a million different dreams but none of them was stronger than the rest. In the end they probably would have paralyzed me.
— Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood
Beneath the handsome exterior beats a heart of darkness.
— James Patterson, Hide and Seek
We're supposed to love flowers, yet we rip them from their homes, and give them to people who don't love us."-Toril Withers (Dark Winter).
— John    Hennessy
I hate this night. I hate that it makes me a person so truly removed from the real me; this man who sits in silence in his parlor – purposely quarantined from his family – is not who I want to be. But on Halloween night, this awful impostor wafts over me like morning fog, and I know there’s no resisting him. Like one anticipates the common cold brought on by a harsh winter, I know this broken and terrified man will soon be visiting when the evening of October 31st falls upon us. And on this yearly autumn night, he will sit and drink. And remember.
— J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween
Night had come and eaten everything.
— Rebecca Ethington, Through Glass
It’s horrible," she said.He looked at her in surprise. Horrible? Wasn’t that odd? He hadn’t thought that for years. For him the word “horror” had become obsolete. A surfeiting of terror made terror a cliché. To Robert Neville the situation merely existed as natural fact. It had no adjectives.
— Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
She was lost now, she'd been silenced- another dead branch on Cordova's warped tree.
— Marisha Pessl, Night Film
The tales of pure terror, of course, are completely naturalistic in their content, and must stand or fall by their merit alone. But what about the supernatural stories? Can we, the children of a scientific age, give any credence to these medleys of devils, ghosts, and other psychical invasions? There is only one answer: we can and do. We are dealing with stories, not with scientific dissertations. And if, as stories, they have the ring of truth, we'll believe them, as stories, implicitly.("Introduction")
— Herbert A. Wise, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
I’m an old man, now. I’ve been alone since my 17th birthday. I’d wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus—I wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life—something right. I didn’t want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I’d ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I’d been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who’d be foolish enough to love me.
— J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween
Please, never tell me what 'horror erotica' is. Real #art is being lost in a bizarre swamp of over-processed, sexually exploitative garbage.
— Carla H. Krueger
Some things you cannot see or explain, but they are there, lurking.Some things dwell in the dark: waiting…watching…haunting.Sometimes evil takes on many forms, many faces.And silence is the last thing you hear, when it’s already too late.THE SILENCE
— Barry Brickey
As the thing came closer, what was left of Nick’s body became revealed and I could see how the dead boy’s eyes had bled from the trauma inflicted upon him; they dripped with steady succession onto the floor between his splayed legs. He looked like a rejected marionette tossed haphazardly in the corner by a frustrated puppeteer, his head drooping so low that his chin rested against his chest. His motionless arms lay at his sides, both of them squeezed into tight fists, as if he’d died futilely trying to defend himself.
— J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween
The last clear thought I have is of my grandmother’s rust-colored wall clock ticking away in the darkness of my apartment—my sanctuary where I dreamed and desired and hoped for goodness and love. I wonder how long that clock will tick without anyone around to hear it. I wonder if maybe I should have taken my grandmother’s silverware or jewelry instead. I wonder – if I knew then what I know now – if I still would have approached Jade that first night and invited her into my life, only to watch as she took it from me and fed it to some Godless thing, as my mother had called it. Would I still have given myself over to her, knowing it would end the same way, with the barbaric flicker of hope that this time she could love me?
— J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween
He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren’t there. He pretended that all was well—that those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off its porch or railing or wooden chair, expanded and morphed and throbbed as if in a funhouse mirror, and joined the procession behind him. The wind picked up, suddenly and fiercely, and construction paper decorations adorning the houses that surrounded him flapped helplessly against their doors and windows. The man ducked against the cold wind, and from the pursuing army of the jack-o’-lanterns behind him. Cardboard skeletons with fastener joints and witches with shredded yarn hair and ghosts with cotton ball sheets and black crayon eyes escaped their thumbtacks and scotch tape and newspaper twine and they flashed and danced in his face. He brushed at them desperately with his hands, attempting to tear a hole through them and escape.
— J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween
With a ring around the rosaryAnd a pocket full of crossesAshes to ashesThey'll all fall down
— Matthew Fitzpatrick, Monsters & Men: An Anthology
I'm not giving up my life. My life began when I met you.
— Shannon Eckrich, Haunting Lia
The clear stars before him took to shuddering and he knew why; they shuddered at sight of what was behind him. He had never divined before that strange Things hid themselves from men, under pretence of being snow-clad mounds of swaying trees; but now they came slipping out from their harmless covers to follow him, and mock at his impotence to make a kindred Thing resolve to truer form. He knew the air behind him was thronged; he heard the hum of innumerable murmurings together; but his eyes could never catch them - they were too swift and nimble; but he knew they were there, because, on a backward glance, he saw the snow mounds surge as they grovelled flatlings out of sight; he saw the trees reel as they screwed themselves rigid past recognition among the boughs.
— Clemence Housman, The Were-Wolf
There was nothing but power, and those who hadn't yet found the tap. (Greachin)
— Red Tash, This Brilliant Darkness
His indirect way of approaching a character or an action, striving to realize it by surrounding rather than invading it, is ideally suited to the indefinite and suggestive presentation of a ghost story.(introduction to "Sir Edmund Orme" by Henry James)
— Herbert A. Wise, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Their faces were contorted with a horror only known to those who have silenced their consciences.
— Chris Nicolaisen, The Life and Death of the Ericsons
I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills from my lips in frothy discomposure. It splatters the pavement like a spray of blood.
— Rebecca Clare Smith, Desecrated Bonds
One of the symptoms of having a broken-heart is the fact that even ghosts will give up on the hope of scaring you as you have already lived through your worst fear.
— Faraaz Kazi
The introduction to horrors so young impressed on me just how helpless and vulnerable I was. Parents are supposed to empower their children to live without them but in my family, I wasn’t given permission to be my own person. I thought I needed them to live and then they abandoned me. It’s no wonder I felt so unempowered well into my adult years.
— Christina Enevoldsen
He got up and ran on, pitching himself down the hill, flying through the branches of the firs, leaping roots and rocks without seeing them. As he went, the hill got steeper and steeper, until it was really like falling. He was going too fast and he knew when he came to a stop, it would involve crashing into something, and shattering pain.Only as he went on, picking up speed all the time, until with each leap he seemed to sail through yards of darkness, he felt a giddy surge of emotion, a sensation that might have been panic but felt strangely like exhilaration. He felt as if at any moment his feet might leave the ground and never come back down. He knew this forest, this darkness, this night. He knew his chances: not good. He knew what was after him. It had been after him all his life. He knew where he was - in a story about to unfold an ending. He knew better than anyone how these stories went, and if anyone could find their way out of these woods, it was him.("Best New Horror")
— Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts
And so, she turned her back on the abyss for another day.
— Megan Kennedy, Bury Me In Smoke
They want to be stimulated. They want to read something that can get under their skin and hang out there for a while.
— Alistair Cross
I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my ‘Pinhead Mood Music’. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral music, and although it it moves toward Vivaldi’s familiar harmonies, there is always the threat that it will fall back into dissonance. The piece progresses in an exquisite agony, poised on a knife edge between beauty and disfigurement, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Perfect.
— Doug Bradley, Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor
Self-confidence is usually little more than wishful thinking in a thigh-high pair of Come F*ck Me boots.
— Alistair Cross
.” I watched her sip at the drink some more. She was strong, healthy, but also petite enough that I was certain I could overpower her. I’d made the right decision not to tranquilize her, I thought. Slipping some powerful barbiturate into a mixed drink wasn’t something I was above, but it always felt like such a lost opportunity. I liked the fight, the tightening and clenching of a woman’s body as she writhed for freedom. I felt the slow swelling of arousal between my legs and made no effort to disguise it.
— Alistair Cross, Beautiful Monster
The heart's the trouble. It knows the monster but remembers the love.
— Gemma Farrow, Beneath the Willow
I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.
— Graham Joyce
Deadlines help me, but my muse hates them. My muse functions in fits and starts, and tends to take very long vacations. Deadlines are like a hot poker to his ass. They force us both to sit down and write, which is what it takes to do this.
— Alistair Cross
Carroll was eleven years old when he saw The Haunting in The Oregon Theater. He had gone with his cousins, but when the lights went down, his companions were swallowed by the dark and Carroll found himself essentially alone, shut tight into his own suffocating cabinet of shadows. At times, it required all his will not to hide his eyes, yet his insides churned with a nervous-sick frisson of pleasure. When the lights finally came up, his nerve endings were ringing, as if he had for a moment grabbed a copper wire with live current in it. It was a sensation for which he had developed a compulsion.Later, when he was a professional and it was his business, his feelings were more muted - not gone, but experienced distantly, more like the memory of an emotion than the thing itself. More recently, even the memory had fled, and in its place was a deadening amnesia, a numb disinterest when he looked at the piles of magazines on his coffee table. Or no - he was overcome with dread, but the wrong kind of dread.("Best New Horror")
— Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts
Sandy’s was one of those places that made poor, white trash feel like high-class consumers. This was the kind of place you’d take your mistress to, but never your wife. Wives expected better. Mistresses were impressed by the blandness of the over-priced wine and the vast Italian menu options.
— Alistair Cross, Beautiful Monster
Any writer of horror needs to at least have a good, solid love of the genre. Also, good horror writers need to have a slightly twisted sense of humor. Without humor, horror just isn’t as good.
— Alistair Cross
Good horror is written by people who understand that fear is one of the cardinal passageways into the core of humanity. Good horror is generally written by folks who grew up on horror; books, movies, etc. You can’t simply decide to write—in any genre—if you don’t first have an understanding of the topic and a strong mental backlog of reference.
— Alistair Cross
Yep,” I said, rolling the body onto its back and staring into the horrified, bloated face, “you’re a single-bagger. My kinda gal.” I gave her a smile and a friendly wink. The face stared back at me with that same frozen look of terror. “Oh, stop being so dramatic,” I said, “You’ll be pretty again, I promise.
— Alistair Cross, Beautiful Monster
The Devil always takes back his own.
— Andrea Zuvich, The Stuart Vampire
The landscape had been so maimed by this new kind of warfare it was as if human architects of great genius had sat down to plan hell, since no two of them could agree on the design of heaven.
— Christopher Buehlman, Those Across the River
My doppelganger wraps the ear in a handkerchief and shoves it into his pocket as he leaves the train with a nod of his head in my direction.”William Wilson in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup
— Steen Langstrup, Metro
We are born. We die. Somewhere in between we live. And how we live is up to us. That’s it.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
What I learned in this tragedy was the eternal lesson of good people going bad.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
He pulled my skirt up. I began to worry. Everyone knew he had broken in girls before and I didn't want it to happen to me. I said, 'No. Get off, please.' He pulled me down the alley and pushed me to the ground. As I lay on my back worrying about my new blue coat, he pushed his fingers up between my legs — and rammed himself into me.I was crying. His lips were pressed against mine but I was motionless, like a small corpse. He grunted and I knew it was over. He got up, I just lay there on the ground, my tights round my ankles. The clock was striking twelve.As he walked away, he turned and said, 'I've always wanted to do it to you. I like your mouth'.When I got in, my mum said, 'Tracey, what's wrong with you?' I showed her my coat, the dirt and the stains, and told her 'I'm not a virgin any more.' She didn't call the police or make any fuss. She just washed my coat and everything carried on as normal, as though nothing had happened.But for me, my childhood was over, I had become conscious of my physicality, aware of my presence and open to the ugly truths of the world. At the age of thirteen, I realised that there was a danger in innocence and beauty, and I could not live with both.(describing childhood rape)
— Tracey Emin, Strangeland
I thought if I loved you enough I could change you. I was so stupid.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
This place is Hell’s waiting room.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
There’s no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
People talk about survival. What they mean is killing the other guy.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
If you’d saved the girl, you’d be a hero. Next time.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I wanted to see the bullet coming, wanted to know the exact moment of my death.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
‘There’s no time for right or wrong,’ I said.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
You shouldn’t have done that, Dave.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
She played me with a bad hand, and I fell for it every time.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Remember. Observe, assess and act. No hesitation. No remorse.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Oh little Poupchette, some may tell you that you are nobody's child, a child of defilement, a child begotten in fear and horror. Some may tell you that you are a child of abomination conceived in abomination, a tainted child, a child polluted long before you were born. Do not pay attention to them, my little sweetheart, please do not listen to them; listen to me. I say you are my child and I love you. I sometimes say that out of horror, beauty and purity and grace are born. I say I am your father for ever. I say the loveliest rose can bloom in contaminated soil. I say you are the dawn, the light of all my tomorrows, and the only thing that matters is the promise you represent. I say you are my luck and my forgiveness. My darling Poupchette, I say you are my whole life.
— Philippe Claudel, Brodeck
There’s nothing worse than delivering bad news to women. I hoped I wouldn’t get good at it.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
The people inside the gym didn’t stand a dead drunk’s chance.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
The sound of him drinking was indescribable—like dirty runoff down a storm drain.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
This guy was a humorless bag of nothing but.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Smiling, he handed Landry the bloody aluminum bat Warnick had used. ‘Time to die, old man,’ he said.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
She gave herself a hard twist and fell into a sitting position, staring at me with those maggot-filled doll’s eyes.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Sal turned, an eye stalk hanging from his teeth.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
When I lifted up the skin, a fat kidney worm dripping with gore raised its bald, blind head and glared at me.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
It’s not about winning, it’s about doing what’s right. And yes, we will do what’s right.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I’m not a bad person.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I was a spectator who had gotten free admission to a freak show.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I notice young girls picking flowers off her gravestone
—  their clean hearts are soapstone. Their small sorrows are for children alone. And all of their stories will never be told.
This is my one last call and lullaby for this eternity. All of my medicine.
— Nicholaus Patnaude, First Aide Medicine
The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book,before a mad woman sets the bed curtains on fire.
— April Genevieve Tucholke, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
River had never lost his cool, not since I'd know him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer's day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when girls were fainting and men were slitting their throats in front of you.
— April Genevieve Tucholke, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
the people are the biggesthorror show on earth,have been forcenturies.
— Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories
When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy. I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened.
— Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of
— Robert G. Ingersoll
I felt a lunatic’s laugh welling up inside me.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Did you ever think it won’t be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Drive. He’s already dead.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
The road up and the road down are one and the same." Heraclitus
— H.I.M., Vampires' Song
But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
This is Denmark. We are Danes. We keep our distance. We do not pick a seat close to strangers if other seats are available. We do not talk to strangers in the trains.”William Wilson in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup
— Steen Langstrup, Metro
Even now I can’t describe the fear that contaminated my blood like black ink.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
‘Can’t you see what they are?’ I said. ‘They’re all dead.’
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I don’t know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
For an instant I saw before me the young girl this used to be.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
‘Eighth one this week,’ he said.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
I knew then I was going to die in the street without ever seeing Holly again. All because I tried to help an old woman, proving for all eternity that no good deed goes unpunished.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
During our time together in this place Holly didn’t outright avoid me or treat me rudely. But she wasn’t—how do women like to put it? She wasn’t emotionally available to me.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
Her voice was small and distant, like she’d already left the room.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
His eyes were like two wafers of slate, grey and lifeless.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
A riverless silence made the air heavy.
— Steven Ramirez, Tell Me When I'm Dead
That Abbie is such a freaking brat who doesn’t know anything! My William is wasting away in that castle and that stuck up, self-righteous cow doesn’t even care because now she’s just all ooooo, Peter I love you! Well I don’t love Peter and he’s a jerk. Let’s go bust down the door!” She sat back and calmly pushed her hair from her face, “Now would you get me a soda?
— Gwenn Wright, Lipstick & Bolsheviks
Jo's whimper rose slightly but the scream she yearned for wouldn't materialise. Instead, as she looked at her hand, she began to make a gurgling, gagging noise, more animal than human.
— Martin Pond, Turn Around Where Possible
It takes many sheep to satisfy one wolf.
— Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape
There was something delightfully intimate about the relationship between predator and prey.
— Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape
More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body.Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. "The door was open," he said incongruously. "I was passing by, and the door was open.""Holmes," I whispered in horror."The door was open," he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.
— Lyndsay Faye, Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson
Horror on earth is real and it is everyday. It is like a flower or like the sun
—  it cannot be contained.
I cannot breathe, or see, nor swim,My darkness is composed of him.
— Nenia Campbell, Wishing Stars: Space Opera Fairytales
I confessed I did not have an opinion; I was only thirteen, and this was my very first dismemberment.
— Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood
Terry loved candlelight dinners and red wine. It was a nice contrast from work.And killing people.
— Jonas Eriksson, Everyday Psychopaths
He was a strange mix of Heinrich Himmler and Barney the Dinosaur.
— Jonas Eriksson, Everyday Psychopaths
His mind, grooved through the uncounted ages to ultimate despair, soared up insanely. His legs and arms glistened like tongues of living fire as they writhed and twisted in the light that blazed from the portholes. His mouth, a gash in his caricature of a human head, slavered a white frost that floated away in little frozen globules.
— A.E. van Vogt
There's a danger and a beauty to the moment which seems out of time. It pierces something deep inside of him, bypassing his rationale, and it touches his very core. In a sudden shock of illumination, and of knowing, he recognizes this woman is his destiny, and their fates are intertwined.
— Scarlett Amaris, Saurimonde
The images start to darken and she feels another hunger well up in her, this one having to do with another kind of desire. The desire to feed, to possess, and the aggressive thrill of a predator capturing and killing its prey as it tears into unspoiled flesh. Its teeth ripping and rending and the satisfying coppery taste of blood. There is the ultimate moment of surrender of drinking away the life essence. The pinnacle of lust which mounts in the very last breath, when the light drains from the victim's eyes and when the soul fades... Then there is only a triumphant cry to the moonlight and the beckoning depths of the ever waiting water.
— Melissa St. Hilaire, Saurimonde
You have really nice teeth,” Terry said and thought they could be excellent for his collection of human body parts.
— Jonas Eriksson, Everyday Psychopaths
From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where, with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population.
— Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love
Spittle flew from Jango’s lips as he shouted at the man in a woman’s voice that sounded like it was made of cyanide and sugar that had been laced with the patter of blood dripping on an abattoir floor, “This is the truth about The Killer, ain’t it baby? You’re just a big ol’ bag of screams under all that big, bad muscle, ain’t you?
— Cedric Nye, Jango's Anthem
Concerted voices of heartfelt petitions in Arabic all pleading for divine intervention are abruptly silenced as the drone ensures fatalities by injecting a final stab in each of their skulls.
— C.J. Anderson, Djesus Undead
The rivers had been drained overnight and what was left were things no person should have to image let alone see. She had been smart enough to stay away. But, other humans— were curious. They saw and the image planted in their heads made them bait for the demons.When they extended their hands and offered them peace of mind, the humans accepted without hesitation.
— Auden Johnson, No Vacancy
For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a great Outer Horror - and his scattered powers had not as yet had time to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
— Algernon Blackwood, Monster Mix
One does not simply tell an archangel they have devoted their life to a folly.
— C.J. Anderson, Djesus Undead
Heaven has no idea its Queen is on the edge of suicide.
— C.J. Anderson, Djesus Undead
I went for the door and opened it, not wanting to see how much this corpse was willing to destroy to get into my bedroom. His body probably would’ve crumbled to pieces before he got in, and I had no clue how to get dead guy out of the carpet.
— Kelly Hashway, Stalked by Death
William sees it all happen again. The pain is not in the event. The subjection to it and his powerless state each time is where his anguish lies. He is unable to influence the situation, despite his desire. He sees the nest outside his house. He sees the baby bird that fell. The mother bird cries frantically for her lost chick. William knows as he approaches the chick that if he touches it his scent will linger, and the mother will reject it. Circling around the fallen creature William hopes it will flee from him, back toward the tree from which it had fallen. His presence only intensifies the creature’s fear. It speeds to his left, heading for the street. Again William tries to flank the bird, but it is too frightened to return to the nest. The chick’s mother wails vainly. William walks into the street trying to herd the bird to safety. The stop light a block away has just turned green. The driver accelerates. William moves from the car’s path and it runs over the bird. The momentum from its wake lifts the bird to the underside of the car, breaking its neck, but not killing it. William watches the bird roll helplessly. It is silent for a second, before it begins to whimper. Its contorted head dangles limply from its body. The noise is tragic. The bird’s mother hears the chick’s pain, but nothing can be done. She laments. A second speeder crushes the chick, leaving only a wet feathered spot in the street. As the cars continue to pass, only one bird is heard. A mother’s grief falls deafly on an unconcerned world.
— M.R. Gott, Where The Dead Fear to Tread
The only sound is the audible record of her thrusts as she becomes wetter. Her beautiful voice echoing in his head, they share the sounds of their amorous flesh moving in unbridled rhythm.
— M.R. Gott, Where The Dead Fear to Tread
I cried for all of those things that should have just been for us...
— Kate Chisman, Creep
Quinn seemed to have become one of a jaded philosophical society, a group of arcane deviates. Their raison d'etre was a kind of mystical masochism, forcing initiates toward feats of occult daredevilry - "glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice", to take from the notebook a phrase that was repeated often and seemed a sort of chant of power. As I suspected, hallucinogenic drugs were used by the sect, and there was no doubt that they believed themselves communing with strange metaphysical venues. Their chief aim, in true mystical fashion, was to transcend common reality in the search for higher states of being, but their stratagem was highly unorthodox, a strange detour along the usual path toward positive illumination. Instead, they maintained a kind of blasphemous fatalism, a doomed determinism which brought them face to face with realms of obscure horror. Perhaps it was this very obscurity that allowed them the excitement of their central purpose, which seemed to be a precarious flirting with personal apocalypse, the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself.("The Dreaming In Nortown")
— Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
Damn it, it wasn’t quite fresh enough!
— H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West: Reanimator
The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare; and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the Lake of Hali chilled my face.("In The Court of the Dragon")
— Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories
A word can change a mind, a sentence can change a life and a book can change the world.
— Tom Kane, The Writing on the Wall
The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!'Those were the days.(introduction to "The Weird Woman")
— Hugh Lamb, Terror by Gaslight: More Victorian Tales of Terror
But sometimes i have to ask myself this question. its true that to us his imaginings are nothing but the inventions of a busy mind. But to him, there simply is no other reality. Further more, he is happy there, so why, I ask myself, why in the name of healing him must we drag him painfully into the world of our own reality?'- Doctor's Memo
— Sadamu Yamashita, Silent Hill 2: The Novel
Nonsense! I have merely come to terms with the fact that I am perfect, and I have decided life must go on, and I must learn to live with myself...
— C.N. Faust, The Dragon's Disciples
Sometimes good people do bad things.
— Andrew Gilmore
When she first saw him, she took him for a ghost. His jet-black hair fluttered in the breeze as he walked, letting her see his eyes. They seemed haunted, lost in some way. He was tall and gaunt, starkly pale in his black clothes. He was the very picture of Anton, even sharing his world-weary eyes of deepest blue. She could hardly look away from this apparition, an echo of all the memories and dreams that had haunted her these many years.
— Amanda M. Lyons, Eyes Like Blue Fire