Clive Barker > Quotes

“Flesh is a trap, and magic sets us free.”
― Clive Barker

“The Deluge wasn’t a wave, was it? It was blind men with axes; it was the great on their knees begging not to die at the hands of idiots; it was the itch of the irrational grown to an epidemic.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“This was the nadir, surely. They had no further to fall.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Con el tiempo, todas las cosas se cansan y comienzan a buscar algún oponente que las salve de sí mismas.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“We all count the hours. We all look for completion, even if we fear it. We long to be consumed. I long to be consumed.”
― Clive Barker, Chiliad: A Meditation

“Logic is the last refuge of a coward.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“This book is so huge, that the mythology took many months to create. There are literally hundreds of characters , and many different worlds described in great detail. It's not the sort of thing that you can simply dash off. I hand-write everything. Now, I've done three drafts on Imajica, which comes to about 14,000 pages. When you're working on a novel, you really must give your life over to the project. This is my eleventh book, and I'm fortunate to know that the audience is there for it. I'm not just writing in the dark.”
― Clive Barker

“Men’s supply of passion, she knew from long experience, was easily depleted. Though they might threaten to move earth and heaven too, half an hour later their boasts would be damp sheets and resentment.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 4

“Houses weren’t haunted, only human minds.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“You fucking idiot! What does it matter what it costs to kill it? It's not human. It's out of Hell.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 3

“ignorant of the place it had been and blind to where it was headed.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“No hay mayor placer que el terror. Siempre y cuando sea el de otra persona”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“In essence, it came down to this: he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or more of her sex were doting on him. Yes, he knew his face was finely made, his forehead broad, his gaze haunting, his lips sculpted so that even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a living mirror to tell him so. More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some undiscovered self that would free him from being”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“Extinct,” Steep murmured. “Yes.” He smiled. “Extinct, extinct, extinct.” It was like a mantra:”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“Well, she’s lucky. She still has her little dominion here in Coldheart Canyon.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Revulsion gave heat to his heals.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“Women had always existed: they had lived, a species to themselves, with the demons. But they had wanted playmates: and together they had made men.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 2

“Allí el placer era dolor, y viceversa. Y él lo conocía tan bien que era como sentirse en casa.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“What I do know is that I have never found clowns remotely funny. I am not alone in this, I think. More people find clowns disturbing or distressing rather than raucously amusing. Is it that the nature of human existence has changed so radically in the last century or so that what was funny to our grandparents and great-grandparents is now tragic or terrifying?”
― Clive Barker, The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus

“This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day — the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things. All this went through Cal’s head, in a vague sort of way, while he watched the circling flocks.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“The winds mourn and whine was wiser than any psalm, prayer, or profession of love he’d ever heard. But”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“What time didn’t steal from under your nose, circumstance did. It was useless to hope otherwise. Useless to dream that the world somehow meant you good.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“It’d just be another opinion,” Maxine said, poking at the fire with the stick she’d picked up. “People would go on believing their favorite versions.” “You think?” “For sure. You can’t change people’s opinion about stuff like that. It’s embedded. They believe what they believe.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Every part of the dead kid’s anatomy was swaying hypnotically. The tongue, hanging from the open mouth. The head, lolling on its slit neck. Even the youth’s penis flapped from side to side on his plucked groin. The head wound and the open jugular still pulsed blood into a black bucket. There was an elegance about the whole sight: the sign of a job well done.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“The stench of disinfectant could not entirely mask the odor of human pain.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 6

“Nobody's allowed to come and mourn, you see. Out of sight, out of mind: that's the idea. Of course, that's not the way it works, is it? People forget prime ministers, but they remember murderers.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 5

“Evil is never abstract. It is always concrete, always particular and always vested in individuals. To deny monsters as individuals the right to speak, to actually state their case, is perverse - because I want to hear the Devil speak. I like the idea that a point of view can be made by the dark side.”
― Clive Barker

“Ένα σωρό πράγματα φεύγουν μέσα από τα χέρια σου και εσύ το μετανιώνεις μόνο όταν τα 'χεις χάσει για πάντα. Αλλά ό,τι χάνεται, χάνεται”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Only when they have outrun the all-too-eager shadows of the Canyon and they are back in the glare of the billboards on Sunset Boulevard, do they wipe their clammy palms, and wonder to themselves how it was that in such a harmless”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“This world . . . it disappoints you?"
"Pretty much," he replied.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart: A Novel