"Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym."
— Stephen King

"[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion."
— Clive Barker

"That which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."
— Stephen King

"Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different style."
— R.L. Stine

"Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly."
— Stephen King

"Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn"
— H.P. Lovecraft

"Swear to me swear to me that if it isn't dead you'll all come back."
— Stephen King (It)

"Invitation to Dance-
It’s a Dance. And sometimes they turn the lights off in this ballroom.
But we’ll dance anyway, you and I. Even in the Dark. Especially in the Dark.
May I have the pleasure?"
— Stephen King

"Vampires, real vampires, didn't nibble on the necks of nubile young virgins. They tore people to pieces and sucked the blood out of the chunks. "
— David Wellington (99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale)

"It is dark. You cannot see. Only the hint of stars out the broken window. And a voice as old as the Snake from the Garden whispers, 'I will hold your hand.'"
— John Wick

"Very well, but remember this... I'll be looking at you when you're laid on the cross and the twelve blows are crashing down on your limbs. When the crowd is finally tired of your screams and wandered home, I will climb up through your blood and sit beside you. I will look deep into your eyes... and drop by drop I will trickle my disgust into them like burning acid until... finally... you perish."
— Patrick Süskind

"Horror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst. "
— Joe Hill

"Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history."
— Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger Volume II: Down to Earth)

"I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times."
— Robert Bloch (Psycho)

"Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?"
— Arundhati Roy

"All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre—

The Feast is over, and the lamps expire."
— Robert E. Howard

"Always just a brainstorm away from our next disaster..."
— Birgit Pratcher (June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies)

"Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man."
— John Wood Campbell Jr.

"The things a man sees when he ain't got a gun.--Watson the Caretaker"
— Stephen King

"I am your number one fan."
— Stephen King (Misery)

"Horror is the removal of masks"
— Robert Bloch

"They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs."
— Susan Hill

"Neither spoke, but lat silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.

At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock came so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house."
— W. W. Jacobs (The Monkey's Paw)

"Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?"
— E.T.A. Hoffmann

"The charm of horror only tempts the strong"
— Jean Lorrain

"The ‘experimental’ writer, then, is simply following the story’s commands to the best of his human ability. The writer is not the story, the story is the story. See? Sometimes this is very hard to accept and sometimes too easy. On the one hand, there’s the writer who can’t face his fate: that the telling of a story has nothing at all to do with him; on the other hand, there’s the one who faces it too well: that the telling of the story has nothing at all to do with him"
— Thomas Ligotti

"We ask only to be reassured
About the noises in the cellar
And the window that should not have been open"
— T.S. Eliot (The Family Reunion)

"We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight."
— H.P Lovecraft

"Hello Clarice..."
— Silence of the Lamb

"Soon from noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what chanced to mound in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth's dust away."
— H.P. Lovecraft

"Norman Bates will never die..."
— Robert Bloch (Psycho II)

"But maybe she should turn the other way while I get dressed. Wouldn't want to ruin her for other men. - Dean"
— Jeff Mariotte (Supernatural: Witch's Canyon)

"And we have not got to allow the partisanship that has really been entrenched in Washington, D.C., no matter who's been in charge. When the Republicans were in charge, I didn't see a lot of progress there, either. When the Democrats, either, though, this last go- around for the last two years."
— Sarah Palin

"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

"Our fiction is not merely in flight from the physical data of the actual world…it is, bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic – a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation…our classic [American] literature is a literature of horror for boys"
— Leslie Fielder

"I think that true horror is accomplished by slowly getting into your brain. The old way is much more scary."
— Sergio Aragones

"The room was plainly but adequately furnished; she noted the shower stall in the bathroom beyond. Actually, she would have preferred a tub, but this would do. "
— Robert Bloch (Psycho)

"'There will never be slaves in Britain,' Godalming continued, 'but those who stay warm will naturally serve us, as the excellent Bessie has just served me. Have a care, lest you wind up the equivalent of some damned regimental water-bearer.'

'In India, I knew a water-bearer who was a better man than most.'"
— Kim Newman (Anno Dracula)

"Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room -- one we are afraid to enter "
— Matthew J. Pallamary (The Small Dark Room of the Soul and Other Stories)