"The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets."
— Poppy Z. Brite

"He has 'le coeur comme un artichaud'. Eddy fumbled for her high school French. 'A heart like an artichoke?' 'Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.'"
— Poppy Z. Brite

"Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness."
— Poppy Z. Brite

"You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you."
— Poppy Z. Brite (Wormwood: A Collection of Short Stories)

"It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone."
— Poppy Z. Brite (Exquisite Corpse)

""Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."

Steve backed away. "They bite?"

"Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."

"By geese?"

"Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."

"So how come he didn't die?"

"This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away.""
— Poppy Z. Brite (Lost Souls)

"If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.


"
— Poppy Z. Brite