c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There was a naked jock on my bed and a thing with tentacles coming out of my toilet. One of these things did not belong, and if you tell me that it was the naked jock, you shouldn't be reading this story.
— Johnny Murdoc, The Horror in Dunwich Hall!
The difficulty with Poe is not figuring out which of his stories rise to the level required of this collection, but rather which of his stories to exclude from it.
— Andrew Barger, The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Horror Anthology
Kaufman almost smiled at the perfection of its horror. He felt an offer of insanity tickling the base of his skull, tempting him into oblivion, promising a blank indifference to the world.
— Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One
It's a rotten world, Miss Millick,' said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. 'Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It's time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule of fear, They'd be no worse than men.' ("Smoke Ghost")
— Fritz Leiber, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now
Well did you call the hypothetical hardware store and buy a theoretical chainsaw?-- Pam to Jessica, True Blood
— Alan Ball, True Blood: All Together Now
This was to be my last trip. Sailing great distances was dangerous, and not very profitable in today's world. I walked down the worn wooden step to the captain's cabin, the creaking of the ship keeping time with my steps. Opening the door I found him bent over an old map."Where are we captain?" I asked, hoping it was close to home."See this spot, where it says "Here there be monsters"?" he said pointing to an image of a horrid beast."Certainly, but you and I both know such creatures don't exist!!"The captain laughed, and looking up at me with an evil glint in his eye said, "Who's talking about sea monsters?". As he spoke the skin from one corner of his mouth fell loose, exposing a yellow reptilian skin beneath."What?" I yelled, and as I turned to run for the cabin door I heard screams and loud moans coming from the deck, and the crew quarters below.I felt fetid breath on the back of my neck, "Aye matey, here there be monsters
— Neil Leckman
In a way, Darius brings the vampire back to a more classical interpretation. A modern day Dracula who is charming, sensual, and completely monstrous. There is no pretense of humanity with him. He considers himself a member of a species that is the true apex predator of the world, feeding on humans and using them as puppets for their own bizarre games. He's not struggling with any inner angst. Most humans are either food, entertainment, or useful tools to him. Sometimes all three. He finds the modern popular interpretation of vampires both amusing and useful for his own agenda.
— Julie Ann Dawson, A Game of Blood
It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roots he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal, smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind, which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. ("Smoke Ghost")
— Fritz Leiber, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now
The little girl’s face was from Will’s vilest nightmares. Cavernous mouth, distended chin, bastardized nose. The enormous, bulging eyes glared at Will, demanded he see the truth, commanded him to acknowledge his sin.
— Kevin Wallis, Beneath the Surface of Things
His body walks out onto the darkened stage , and a roar goes up from the crowd. He stands in front of the mic, and he can feel his face twist in a sneer-the Elvis sneer from his dreams-though he never told it to move. He is powerless now, a spectator at his own moment of glory.
— Joseph Garraty, Voice
Here beneath the towering pines, by the river blueFarragut will ever stand, alma mater true
— Bruce A. Sarte, Towering Pines Volume One: Room 509
Sometimes the truth is so bizarre and mind bending that it must be presented as fiction to be accepted.George SaundersThe Bookseller
— C. Robert Cales
He wasn’t sure why he felt so compelled to follow the singing, or why he needed to bring the foot with him, but he knew the two phenomena were connected. And in the midst of the mystery lay his father. His father’s sanity. Nicholas was sure of this.
— Kevin Wallis, Beneath the Surface of Things
That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms.Goddamn booze!Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, 'Go and sin no more.' Vincenzo appeared at Cairncross' side and together they laughed insanely, then vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.I made several high-minded resolutions, muttered half-heard but sincere-sounding prayers to all the recently deposed saints, thrashed and rolled clean off the bed.I might just as well have stayed up.
— Jeff Rice, The Night Stalker
Succumbing finally, she lets out a loud shriek as her vehicle stops at a red light. “Fuck.” She hollers cursing the night. Cursing the shadows, cursing the unknown condemned she intends to meet this evening. Tears roll down her cheeks landing on her bullet proof vest.
— M.R. Gott, Where The Dead Fear to Tread
To these children, the door William has just come through is a portal. Being shoved through it means a trip to hell where only demons come to visit and the man before them fits that description; his deep, hard eyes frame his long, winding scar and behind him, flames rise as the smell of smoke and charring meat waft into the room.
— M.R. Gott, Where The Dead Fear to Tread
A vein throbs to the left of his forehead. It pulsates, mirroring the violence in the room.
— M.R. Gott, Where The Dead Fear to Tread
It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
Jesus Christ-" "Is Not here right now," the man in black replied,"and even if he were, he could not save you.
— Brian Keene, A Gathering of Crows
It was at the outskirts of the world that the Old Things accumulated, like driftwood round the edges of the sea. ("The Troll")
— T.H. White, Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome
He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases led down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds, and in different space-time continua.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep
With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living. Stripped of all earthly hope, bereft of every consolation, he was rendered as poor as mortal can possiblybe on this side of the grave.
— Ludwig Tieck, Wake Not the Dead
I will come,' the priest answered, 'for I have read in old books of these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste life and blood.
— Francis Marion Crawford, For the Blood is the Life and Other Stories
If that other fellow doesn't know his happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal with me.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
Oh incomprehensible pederasts, I shall not heap insults upon your great degradation; I shall not be the one to pour scorn on your infundibuliform anus. It is enough that the shameful and almost incurable maladies which besiege you should bring with them their unfailing punishments.
— Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and Poems
Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.
— Saki
Yet, despite all, it is a difficult thing to admit the existence of ghosts in a coldly factual world. One's very instincts rebel at the admission of such maddening possibility. For, once the initial step is made into the supernatural, there is no turning back, no knowing where the strange road leads except that it is quite unknown and quite terrible. ("Slaughter House")
— Richard Matheson, Collected Stories, Vol. 2
A horror writer is one who is not only willing to look into the darkest of shadows...but to reach into them too.
— Thomas Scopel, Twitch
It was as if the city itself was preparing for some impending catastrophe. There had always been talks of ghost and darkness here, even in his boyhood, and now that darkness seems to be seeping from the stones and timbers as much as it was descending from heavens.
— K.J. Wignall, Blood
There is but a gentle stillness inside every cerebral. Tiny waterfalls of blood vessels rushing, becoming lethal.
— Justin Bienvenue, The Macabre Masterpiece: Poems of Horror and Gore
Maloney looked around my room and nodded like he approved of the extravagance surrounding him: the inch-thick carpet with its diamond designs, the half moon flock of the wallpaper, and the antique furniture, polished to a museum quality shine. The two goons he brought with him flanked the door, equally impressed, I could tell by their dropped jaws and roving, wanton eyes. One of them set a briefcase on the floor beside him. Finally Maloney’s eyes found me, and his expression turned from amazement to shock.“I didn’t expect you to be--”“A Vampire?” I asked, feeling the touch of a smile form on my lips.
— Craig Jones, Gem - No Loose Ends
Honey, you worry too much. Nothing is going to happen, I mean come on, you’re in the house of Mr. Hausefalle, the guru of home security! You’re probably safer over there than here."- House Trap, ch. 4: A Grave Mistake.
— Mike Mauthor, House Trap
Franz said 'Your picture, Viki, suggests that sense of breaking-up we feel in the modern world. Families, nations, classes, other loyalty groups falling apart. Things changing before you get to know them. Death on the installment plan – or decay by jumps. Instantaneous birth. Something out of nothing. Reality replacing science fiction so fast that you can't tell which is which. Constant sense of deja-vu - 'I was here before, but when, how?' Even the possibility that there's no real continuity between events, just inexplicable gaps. And of course every gap – every crack – means a new perching place for horror.
— Fritz Leiber
The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing. ("The Black Dog")
— Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane
As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow, I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth's supreme horors-one of those nameless blights of outer voids whose faint demon scratchings we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our own finite vision has given us a merciful immunity.
— H.P. Lovecraft
No one, none of us have rights. There is no destiny. We have responsibilities to ourselves and each other. We have responsibilities and the choice whether or not we live up to those responsibilities.
— Brian Fatah Steele, Further Than Fate: five tales of post-mythic darkness
The place was silent and - aware.
— P.C. Wren
Noc knew that his girlfriend was better as he got to the door of Kay’s living room. This he could tell by the sound of her screaming at Turney for some infraction on the Son of Time’s part. He opened it to see her soaking wet, cornering Turney by the stereo and holding a ball of Hellfire. Noc burst out laughing at the normalcy of the whole thing.
— Brian Fatah Steele, Petty Like A God
It was not a noisy wind but the kind that suggests something very big and thin fresh from the horror of Infinite Space.
— Jessie Douglas Kerruish, The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension
He was terrified by the sublime horror of it, for intensity of feeling, carried to this degree, is sublime. ("A Woman's Vengeance")
— Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques
Even the most impassioned devotee of the ghost story would admit that the taste for it is slightly abnormal, a survival, perhaps, from adolescence, a disease of deficiency suffered by those whose lives and imaginations do not react satisfactorily to normal experience and require an extra thrill
— L.P. Hartley
norris didn't cry, but he was apt to puke on them, the way he had puked on homer gamache that time he had found homer sprawled in a ditch out by homeland cemetary, beaten to death with his own artificial arm.
— Stephen King, Needful Things
Bullshit. You can paint with a fork, you can kill with a fork. A fork is a tool. Don't let yourself be confined by the definitions of others.
— Brian Fatah Steele, Unknown Book 7050528
Still, the car started, so we drove off to the movies. Popcorn happened. Previews, ads, and an annoying kid all went down like clockwork. The picture started and then ended a while later, the world unchanged by its passing.
— Adam P. Knave, Crazy Little Things
It is this outer reach of existential abnegation – the moment where subjective identity deserts itself and becomes enslaved without consciousness of its subjugated condition – that Mirbeau consistently sought to decry with horror.
— Emily Apter
Once the frontiers of horror have been crossed, one will pass from form to form beyond the human and from metamorphosis to metamorphosis to accomplish, in the anguish of an impossible return, the most terrible journey to the depths of darkness.
— Georges Limbour
Since the fall of Man and the return of Magery and our older ways, most disputes were settled in a civilized manner: sword to the face, mace to the neck, acceptable societal situational handlers
— Adam P. Knave, Crazy Little Things
No sport, watching horror movie with friends in bright room.Try that alone at night without light with mirror above screen!
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Gosnell turned almost no one away from the Women’s Medical Society clinic. This is not meant as a compliment. Repentant Gosnell employee Adrienne Moton testified he would perform abortions on any girls or women with no concern about the age of their babies. The only times she could recall Gosnell refusing to perform an abortion was when somebody’s Social Security number couldn’t be verified. In those cases, Gosnell was worried that the “patient” was an undercover cop.
— Ann McElhinney, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer
On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!--but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!
— Washington Irving
Is it because I'm a girl?"Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded. "Well, fuck you!" She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. "Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!" she turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. "This is something more than some diddly shit kids game like tag, or guns, or hide and go seek, and you know it, Bill! We're supposed to do this, that's part of it! And you're not going to cut me out just because I'm a girl, do you understand? You better. Or I'm leaving right now!
— Stephen King
To her eyes, used to diversity, there was a troubling uniformity about them all, something that spoke of isolation, and a dull and thoughtless cruelty.
— Jack Ketchum, Off Season
Never forget that time is the most valuable thing we can spend, so don't throw it away!
— Kerry ONeal, What If: An Anthology of Short Stories
Working with some real dirt seemed fitting for a woman whose hands felt like they would remain forever filthy. She decided to go after the thickets of weeds that seemed determined to ruin her garden, just as she had gone after those dark things crawling from her drain that seemed determined to ruin her life. Summer rains had nourished the thick tangles. Healthy and strong, the weeds twisted along the yard’s edges in dense tuffs. Eden’s hoe whacked away, and at least she felt some satisfaction denying those flower-killers the opportunity to strangle the remaining beauty from her world. She swung the hoe like a pissed off Grim Reaper.
— Ken Goldman --From SINKHOLE
The fly that should be dead and the dog that should be dead in the house that should be dead, and the bride, who would be dead soon.It watched approvingly, appreciating the complexities—and fragilities—of life.
— Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization
The sun will always rise, but we may never know
— Aprl Ray
Friendship and sex were really all she wanted from men these days.
— Jack Ketchum, Off Season
A ten-year-old Amanda wandering around the sights and sounds of a carnival. Trying to take it all in as such an event was much larger than the backroads of isolated territory from whence she grew up. She could not imagine this many people assembled in one place. It was made more disturbing by the fact none of them seemed familiar. Short for her age, she wandered unnoticed among the crowds and began to feel the first stirrings of fear. The loud talk, the screaming children, the long lines of procession, along with the myriads of odors created a miasma that she wanted to flee. The laughter and the faux expressions of joy on the faces of people, took on the maroon tones of a nightmare. She could imagine underneath the laughter, were horrid screams about to erupt.
— Jaime Allison Parker, River at the World's Dawn
What's a jagoff?" Stich asked."It's like a jerkoff, except it's you," Kat said.
— Nelson W. Pyles, Demons, Dolls, & Milkshakes
I am, like you, travelling along a road of absolute uncertainty and chaos. The only truth is that one day, we will all reach the end.
— M.E. Ellington, The Martialis Incident
They will find whatever button will make you dance, and dance you will, no matter how hideous the tune.
— Neal Shusterman, Scythe
One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, "I am lying here in the dark waiting for death." The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, "Oh, nonsense!" and stood over him as if transfixed.Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath - "The horror! The horror!"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt -"Mistah Kurtz - he dead.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
You coming or not?" he repeated impatiently.I was going to say no. But then, glancing at the curtains, I thought, it's probably no more spooky out there in that cemetery than it is here in my own bedroom!
— R.L. Stine, Welcome to Dead House
On the outside, I 'm a husband and a father to three sons. I end to keep quiet and stay to myself. That way I stay out of trouble as much as possible. Some people say I'm almost too quiet but it's like that saying goes, it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for...
— Ron Chapman, Twisted Madness,: My Apocalyptic World
By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Horror Short Stories
She had always given too much of her life over to relationships, and they’d never quite worked out. Now she was simplifying her life in favor of her career. It gave her a sense of control to watch herself succeeding, and a great deal of satisfaction.
— Jack Ketchum, Off Season
Those aren't doors, and they're not opening. Those are crypts, Richie. They're cracking open and the vampires you thought were dead are all flying out again.
— Stephen King, It
He put the car in gear and went, feeling again how easy it had been to slip through an unexpected fissure in what he had considered a solid life- how easy it was to get over onto the dark side, to sail out of the blue and into the black.
— Stephen King, It
He felt more crypts cracking open inside of him; the stench he smelled was not decayed bodies but decayed memories, and that was somehow worse.
— Stephen King, It
Maybe this isn't home, nor ever was- maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.
— Stephen King, It
Krisztina played the song. It was a lament made of eight notes, repeated. It was an empty melody. It sounded elemental too; it made Krisztina think of the snow falling beyond the window and across Budapest. She wondered if it was snowing in England. Alice’s mother would be here again later, all the way from London. There was so much grief. They were mourning her little girl before she had gone. Without realising she heard these words making themselves part of the song. She played what she could, her head down, her face solemn and determined. She went back to the start, and felt the world falling away, the tears drying on her face. She heard the words coming, falling like the luminous snow. After a few minutes she looked across what seemed like a huge divide to Alice on the bed and faltered. In the house of the body, the lights were being extinguished, one by one. The floors were now bare, the walls unadorned, all sound hollow and lost; all that remained was the ghost of what was, the glimmer of the melody, the tune, the song of a life lived and lost in three minutes.
— Simon Avery, The Teardrop Method
I wonder how much- or how little- they remember. I am somehow convinced that they don't remember any of it, because they don't need to remember. I'm the only one that hears the voice of the Turtle, the only one who remembers, because I'm the only one who stayed here in Derry. And because they're scattered to the four winds, they have no way of knowing the identical patterns their lives have taken. To bring them back, to show them that pattern....yes, it might kill some of them. It might kill all of them.
— Stephen King, It
Donald Trump is worse than any horror story I've written.
— Stephen King
I was crying for the little girl I had been, who had withstood terrifying nightmares of death and blood and war and maiming. And when I had tried to share those horrors, the shock on my friends' faces had told me I was not normal, and I should keep my dreams to myself.
— Cheryl R. Cowtan, Girl Desecrated
Spooky Twisties:All things Spooky, here beginThey lay and wait, in books within.They sometimes pass, in open space.Then leave and go, without a trace.Some appear on the spot.Some we know, others not.Sometimes we are afraid to say,“leave us now”, or beg to stay.At times they leave a sign beyond,A gentle breeze, or note from song.Be not afraid, to read story’s close.For in the dark, your spirit goes.
— Terri Bertha, Spooky Twisties I: 13 Tales of Terror
Ben knew that no matter how far you run, you're still yourself when you get there.
— Brendan Duffy, House of Echoes
Bill suited the action to the word, getting up and leaning over the handlebars and pumping the pedals at a lunatic rate. Looking at Bill's back, which was amazingly broad for a boy of eleven-going-on-twelve, watching it work under the duffel coat, the shoulders slanting first one way and then the other as he shifted his weight from one pedal to the other, Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable...they would live forever and ever.
— Stephen King, It
So you're lost, uh? Happens a lot out here. You walk around for days, seeing things, losing your bearings, crying out for God, But He can't hear you. You can scream and scream but nobody'll ever hear you.
— Craig Davidson, Cataract City
This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes.
— Edgar Allan Poe, King Pest
But if you wish, you can imagine that the Shadow does wait for your return and that it does remember everything that has gone before and that it doesn’t let you accept yourself as perfect until you let it. There is truth in that. That is why a child usually cries as soon as it’s born. With its first breath, the Shadow returns.
— Christopher Pike, Remember Me
But he doesn't see what's so great about leaving your mark on things. You have a life and then it ends and you're dead. Living it is the point, not proving to other people that you were there. The whole thing is really just water pouring down a plughole, but that's absolutely fine. Standing water gets stagnant.
— M. R. Carey
I always said I acted like a twelve-year old, so I decided to write like a twelve-year old.
— Terri Bertha, Spooky Twisties I: 13 Tales of Terror
No child should have to see all that I have seen
— Brooke Stonex, Raised in Hell: The Chilling and Overwhelming true story of internet icon Brooke Stonex
You will never be pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, successful enough, or famous enough for the media
— Brooke Stonex, The Media Kills: Reality Horror by Brooke Stonex
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
— Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Amari swung around in her seat to look back and there was indeed a small girl sitting on the boundary wall. She didn’t seem to be looking at the car that had just passed but up ahead. Amari turned around to see what she was looking at and she saw it, up ahead, the farm house that she could only assume was their new home.
— Sian B. Claven, Ensnared
Oh so we are neighbours?” She tried to smile sweetly, so Maggie felt like she could talk more. Maggie shrugged again, “Not for long.” Amari got goosebumps and asked, “Oh why? Where are you guys moving too?” Maggie looked at her again and said stoically, “No where.
— Sian B. Claven, Ensnared
Well, yeah, you listen to a talking snake and there's gonna be trouble.
— Mike Mignola, Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea
Even in death, may you be triumphant
— Darren Shan, A Living Nightmare
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Seated in the middle of the floor with its back to me was the naked figure of a baby of, perhaps, two years, prattling wordlessly in its sing-song treble as it played with a pile of gleaming white objects arranged about it in a circle. One of these, a globular thing of peculiar configuration, it grasped in its right hand, and banged down noisily among the rest. Opposite, just discernible in the shadowy corner, sat the largest brindled cat I had ever seen, dreamily watching the play through half closed, flame-yellow eyes. I suppose it must have been many minutes that I stood there dumbfounded, staring at this incredible spectacle, before my dazed senses registered its full hideousness, and then a strangled gasp escaped me, for I saw that the toy in the child’s hand was a tiny human skull and that all the other white things were the various bones of an infant skeleton!
— L.A. Lewis, Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales
You have done well so far, my magnificent creature. Soon you will be with me.
— Dave Zeltserman, Monster
This isn’t how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to be me. Not this.
— Aaron Dries, Where the Dead Go to Die
Humankind is but the pieces in a game, plastic soldiers waging war between boy gods.
— David Brian, The Strange Case at Misty Ridge
To the left, just past the painting, on the other side of the hall, is the bathroom, the sort of open door that if cameras found it as they passed through the house in a horror movie would trigger a blast of synthesizers.
— John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van
It all floats down here!
— Stephen King, It
Logically, it doesn’t make sense for people to make stories of things that go bump in the night during a full moon.” He paused for a moment, then added one final comment. “No, Megan… it’s during a new moon that the night is darkest. It’s during a new moon… that the real monsters come out.
— Richard Crofton, Agents of Shadow
The only way to achieve success is by believing you can achieve your goals, no matter what. The story you tell yourself has the power to transform your life or destroy it. When you change your story, you can change your life.
— Tony Robbins
Horror symbol of domination and equation removal. You put stuff then remove them… then again, the same goes by and for the characters.
— Deyth Banger
You have no idea what it’s like, knowing you’re going to die in an hour. Sixty short minutes are now the only things that separate you from the other side. From the country undiscovered by the living. From that inevitable end we all must face. Guess that’s what the whole death row thing is about, though. If you ask me now if I feel sorry for what I’ve done, I’d have to tell you plainly the answer is no. I’d do it all again, given the opportunity. I’d kill them all. Over, and over, and over. The court-appointed psychiatrist described me as having a “severe antisocial personality disorder with excessive violent tendencies.” But I’m letting you know now I never stood out in a crowd. Never drew attention to myself. I was just a regular woman, one you’d see in the convenience store, and smile at politely. Who would have ever suspected what I was capable of? All those people. Those useless, useless people. I gave them a use. I was an artist. And my canvas of choice was the clean human skull.
— Sean M. Thompson, Too Late
All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.
— Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort
I assure you, if Uncle Henry had stepped out from among the trees in a little copse which borders the path at one place, carrying his head under his arm, I should have been very little more uncomfortable than I was. To tell you the truth, I was rather expecting something of the kind.
— M.R. James, A Thin Ghost and Others
I saw the massive stone altar first begin to glow like a ruby; then it was a heart of liquid gold like a solid single-crystal chrysoprase: the gold intensified into ice-cold emerald and passed into the dark sapphire of an arctic sky; this again withdrew into a violet so deep that the visual purple of the eye itself seemed absorbed in that depth, that abyss of color in which sight was being drowned. And as this intensification of vibrancy seemed to sweep across the visible spectrum up to those ranges where energy absorbs all mass and that which can pierce the most solid is itself fine beyond all substance, so it seemed with hearing. That abyss of sound which I had been thinking of as only depth, it, too, seemed to rise or, rather, I suppose I was carried up on some rising wave which explored the deep of the height.As the light drew toward the invisible, I experienced a sound so acute that I can only remember feeling to myself that this was the note emitted when the visible universe returns to the unmanifest—this was the consummatum est of creation. I knew that an aperture was opening in the solid manifold. The things of sense were passing with the music of their own transmutation, out of sight. Veil after veil was evaporating under the blaze of the final Radiance. Suddenly I knew terror as never before. The only words which will go near to recreating in me some hint of that actual mode are those which feebly point toward the periphery of panic by saying that all things men dread are made actually friendly by this ultimate awfulness. Every human horror, every evil that the physical body may suffer, seemed, beside this that loomed before me, friendly, homely, safe. The rage of a leaping tiger would have been a warm embrace. The hell of a forest wrapped in a hurricane of fire, the subzero desolation of the antarctic blizzard, would have been only the familiar motions of a simple well-known world. Yes, even the worst, most cunning and cruel evil would only be the normal reassuring behavior of a well-understood, much-sympathized-with child. Against This, the ultimate Absolute, how friendly became anything less, anything relative.
— Gerald Heard, Dromenon: The Best Weird Stories of Gerald Heard
My Dear Friend,You do not know me, but I know you. Since you first breathed in this world, I have watched you. The hopes you have wished, the worries you have feared, the sins you have committed–I know them all. I am The Observer, The Recorder. I am also The Punisher. The time has come for your punishment. Listen closely, the hourglass runs low.
— Christopher Pike, Chain Letter
Such a shovel, it seemed a waste not to use it.
— Daniel Kraus, Rotters
Horror spawns horror
— Stephen King
Clearly, you don't know much about horror, he said. Horror is premised on the experience of what we do not and cannot understand, whereas what you're talking about is mere low-class smut, which every schoolboy has encountered before he's in long pants.
— Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean
The American id could not be educated, Spinks thought. It needed horror in order to stay awake and to justify its most pleasureful pursuit, the destruction of helpless people who had never done anything wrong.
— Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean
The idea that the spirits of those once tortured in the house might still be there was the avenue his imagination began to explore. The groaning of the wood sounded like screams from the dungeon and the clunking pipes were the implements of torture. His bedcovers seemed to offer less protection than they had done in his younger years, he felt naked and at the mercy of his thoughts, and it wasn’t long before the skull he’d seen in the cellar had a face, manifested by fear and imagination.
— Matthew  Williams, Shadowchild
and the wind gathered the leaves as a mother gathers her children and blew them irrevocably, lovingly, into the haunted wildness
— Elliot Mabeuse, The Moth's Song: And Other Stories
What one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens.
— Algernon Blackwood, The Willows
The precautions of nervous people re infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla: By Joseph Sheridan le Fanu - Illustrated
But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla: By Joseph Sheridan le Fanu - Illustrated
Eve wasn't sure what right the clown had to butcher the poor girl like that. In fact, most horror movies made her angry. Though the 'final girl' usually got out alive, she was stripped of so much by the time the credits rolled.
— Christa Carmen, Four Souls of Eve
Kyle's throat caught. His boastful expression turned to panic. He made the universal sign of choking at her, and stamped his feet like a child having a temper tantrum in the candy aisle. Chloe did not move.
— Christa Carmen, Just Desserts
The ever-present macabre, a universal dance,You cannot hide, whether you wield crossbow or lance. Like the bones of the house in which you dwell, Death will come, to drag your soul to hell.
— Christa Carmen, The Book of the Macabre
You can't drink 'English afternoon tea' in the morning," the barista said to her, his eyes blazing like shards of crystal meth about to ignite. "Do you want to be responsible for fucking up the universe?
— Christa Carmen, The Book of the Macabre
Defeated, Jo turned her head as the knives hurdled through the air. There was another photograph on the wall: a shot of Franny Jo had never seen before. As the woman in the photo watched her knives driven home, the corners of her mouth turned up. For the first time ever, Jo was privy to a genuine smile on the lips of Franny Trymark.
— Christa Carmen, Devolution Z: The Horror Magazine September 2016
I was going to make the little hound here part of your display, but you know, against all odds, I’ve found myself growing to like the little guy! You were going to be a girl transforming into a werewolf, but now I think you’ll be part of my Hansel & Gretel display. I needed a trespassing little snoop!
— Christa Carmen, Jitter Issue #4
It was in that small lack of movement that Poet could see true horror. A mirror held up to the human race and how it can be manipulated. Ruined.
— Suzanne Young, Poet Anderson ...of Nightmares
We're going to have such fun, you and I.
— J.D. Barker, The Fourth Monkey
The deal is this. You be the hero. Come down here. Unarmed. Come inside with your hands on your head. I'll let everybody go. Then I'll blow your fucking head off. Sir. How's that for a deal? You buy it?
— Richard Bachman, Rage
Arguably, horror may be understood as a fictional indulgence in fantasies of violence, and our fascination with it seen as a form of sublimation of repressed desires. If we accept this line of thinking, then horror has the benefit of, at least, being one of the most honest of genres.
— Xavier Aldana Reyes, Horror: A Literary History
She counted each second, each moment of life stolen from her, moving her closer to death.
— Scott T Goudsward
Another heaping portion of shitty life, please. And an extra order of I'll just go fuck myself then, too.
— Scott T Goudsward
You saw what I saw, right? Adrienne doing something nice for Xarissa of her own free will. I think I did, said G.ALunette stared into the unknown. This has to be a sign of the coming apocalypse We are all going to die.
— Emily Kirby, The Silver Codex II: Reflections Edition
A young man is afraid of his demon and pulls his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him.
— D.H. Lawrence
What none of them knew, of course, was that Carrie White was telekinetic.
— Stephen King, Carrie
I love waking up to the sound of babies laughing. Unless it is at 1 am and you live alone...
— Youtube Video
What's wrong with wanting to live...? We may be different but we were still given life. Given a chance. If we can only eat humans, then that's what we'll do. How else are we supposed to live with these bodies of ours?!
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 3 [Tokyo Guru 3]
This world is wrong. We have to correct it.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 3 [Tokyo Guru 3]
Please... Don't make me a murderer.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 3 [Tokyo Guru 3]
Even if it's a life in shackles, if you have somebody who accepts you for what you really are, how reassuring would that be?
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 4 [Tokyo Guru 4]
I don't know if ghouls are allowed to live either. But there has to be a reason we exist.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 3 [Tokyo Guru 3]
What's tragic isn't that we can't retaliate...What's truly tragic is......being consumed with vengeance and not being able to live your life.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 2 [Tokyo Guru 2]
If I'd been born a ghoul, I think I would've killed people. I just happened to be born a human. That's the only reason why I'm allowed to live a moral life.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 4 [Tokyo Guru 4]
Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
The day had begun like any other ordinary day for Barnabas Crackle. That is to say, as extra-ordinarily as his days typically began, which were the usual for our faithful protagonist.
— Brooke Warra, Sanitarium Magazine Issue #31: Bringing you the Best Horror Fiction, Dark Verse and Macabre Entertainment
Something this rare... Nobody can have him but me...
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 4 [Tokyo Guru 4]
I’m supposed to feel like it’s such a great apartment, but I don’t. It’s the right price, there are no bugs and it’s got a great view, but it’s the lair of Satan...--Nil Caveat
— A.R. Braun, Horrorbook: twenty-two tales of terror
Hanging from every corner, above every window, standing on every shelf and tabletop, were dozens of handmade birdcages. Nomi had crafted them all, mostly out of old fishing twine, scraps of nets, and chicken wire. Woven in between the bars of the cages were bits of seashells, crab shells, pebbles, and driftwood she had scavenged along the beach. In a pinch she had made a few out of old clothes hangers she had scissored apart and woven together with strips of a negligee or shirt. Each one was personal, each one was unique, each one was a story
— Brooke Warra, Sanitarium Magazine Issue #42: Bringing you the Best Short Horror Fiction, Dark Verse and Macabre Entertainment
The cold feel of the leather...Peeking at the world from my other eye...It was strangely exciting...
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 2 [Tokyo Guru 2]
The organism - there was no other thing she could think to call it - churned and moved as it propelled itself across the ground, the living bodies of animals briefly appearing before being submerged in a sea of bugs as others rose to the surface. And then there were the bones. At first she didn't quite understand what she was seeing. For a moment she believed that they were pieces of wood - limbs of trees picked up by the undulating mass - but when she saw the skull, its jaw hanging open in a silent scream, she understood the horror of what it was. the remains of victims were a part of its body, flowing within the multitude that made up its mass.
— Thomas E. Sniegoski, Savage
You make your decisions for the greater good.But I don't know a thing about what it takes to attack an investigator or the laws of the ghoul world either. That's why I want to see it for myself before I decide what I'm going to do!
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 2 [Tokyo Guru 2]
I been starin' at the back a Jimmy Nelson's head for four grades now and I been noticin' how his blond hair curls against the skin on his neck and the birthmark shaped like a half-moon I wanna press my fingernail into.
— Brooke Warra
The girl lives in a beautiful dollhouse made of stone', I wrote one time in my dairy when I was young, my handwriting shaky but sure. 'But beneath her shining plastic smile, there are only screams'.
— Amy Lukavics, The Women in the Walls
The mother sings a hungry songOf blood and cracking teethShe dances in the dark belowwants to pull us underneathHer claws, they rise, they sway in danceto the melody of screamsHer lullaby will never endtill the world comes apart at the seams
— Amy Lukavics, The Women in the Walls
Dread is the first and the strongest types of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is. The fear that comes when you first realize that your spouse should have been home an hour ago; when you realize that a window you are sure you closed is now open, the curtains billowing, and you're alone in the house.Terror only comes when you see the thing you're afraid of. The intruder is coming at you with a knife. The headlights coming toward you are clearly in your lane. The Klansmen have emerged from the bushes and one of them is holding a rope. This is when all the muscles of your body, except perhaps the sphincters, tauten and you stand rigid; or you scream; or you run. There is a frenzy to this moment, a climactic power-but it is the power of release, not the power of tension. And bad as it is, it is better than dread in this respect: Now, at lest, you know the face of the thing you fear. You know its borders, its dimensions. You know what to expect.Horror is the weakest of all. After the fearful thing has happened, you see its remainder, its relics. The grisly, hacked-up corpse. Your emotions range from nausea to pity for the victim. And even your pity is tinged with revulsion and disgust; ultimately you reject the scene and deny its humanity; with repetition, horror loses its ability to move you and, to some degree, dehumanizes the victim and therefore dehumanizes you. As the sonderkommandos in the death camps learned, after you move enough naked murdered corpses, it stops making you want to weep or puke. You just do it. They've stopped being people to you.
— Orson Scott Card
The girl lives in a beautiful dollhouse made of stone, I wrote one time in my diary when I was young, my handwriting shaky but sure. But underneath her shining plastic smile, there are only screams.
— Amy Lukavics, The Women in the Walls
There's no place for someone who can't decide between being one or the other.
— Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul, tome 1
I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything...I'm just a normal college student who likes to read...But...If I were to write a book with me as tge main character...It would be......A tragedy.
— Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul, tome 1
I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything...I'm just a normal college student who likes to read...But...If I were to write a book with me as the main character...It would be......A tragedy.
— Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul, tome 1
Your heart is burning strong with righteous indignation... That flame is scattering sparks that may set fire elsewhere. That fire of yours will one day spread to others seeking a just world. The point is whether you have a torch in your heart or not. To light a fire to others.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 2 [Tokyo Guru 2]
Tormented by an unworldly hunger, yet not knowing how to satisfy it.
— Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul, tome 1
We can't crush evil with morals. We are justice. We are morality.
— Sui Ishida, 東京喰種トーキョーグール 2 [Tokyo Guru 2]
If I become like you, I will have no will of my own. I will have no individuality, I will just be your puppet.’'True.’ Sio smiled thinly. 'But even a puppet may dance before its strings are drawn tight. You will dance, Cass, and the heavens will applaud you.
— Christopher Pike, The Hollow Skull