Clive Barker > Quotes

“But then sanity was a movable feast, wasn't it? One man's madness might be another's politics.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 5

“The dead have highways." Clive Barker”
― Clive Barker

“I wanted to be gone forever from being and knowing, which are the pieces of”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“But when I look out at it I think, well, it’s going to take us all one of these days, whoever we are: mad bastards, lovers, drunkards, it’s not going to pick and choose. We’ll all go to nothing sooner or later. And you know, maybe it’s my age, but that doesn’t worry me any longer. We all have our time, and when it’s over, it’s over.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: A spellbinding epic fantasy novel

“… the spirit has its homeland, which is the realm of the meaning of things. Saint-Exupéry The Wisdom of the Sands”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“We’re both thieves, Harvey Swick. I take time. You take lives. But in the end we’re the same: both Thieves of Always.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always: A Fable

“He looked too drained to argue, his stare somehow unfinished, as though it had a place it wanted to rest but couldn’t find.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“He spent three months in a wash of depression and self-pity that bordered the suicidal. But even that solution was denied him by his new found nihilism. If nothing was worth living for it followed , didn't it , that there was nothing worth dying for either.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Men and your hunts,” Lilith went on, addressing, it seemed, some larger error in the Duke’s sex. “If you hadn’t been out killing healthy stags and boars in the first place, you could have married and lived and loved. But”—she shrugged—“we do as our instincts dictate, yes? And yours brought you here. To the very edge of your own grave.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“They knew a lot, the dead. How many times had she said to Harry they were the world’s greatest untapped resource? It was true. All they’d seen, all they’d suffered, all they’d triumphed over – lost to a world in need of wisdom.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“There was time for all their miracles now. For ghosts and transformations; for passion and ambiguity; for noonday visions and midnight glory. Time in abundance.

For nothing ever begins.

And this story, having no beginning, will have no end”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“he felt sick as a flea in a leper’s jock strap.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“does a lost soul help lost souls?”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“What are you trying to prove? Do you think if you kill enough people in the worst ways imaginable they’ll give you a name like the Madman, or the Butcher? It doesn’t matter how many abhorrent tortures you devise. You’ll always be the Pinhead.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“He’d never seen such a look on any human face: such a wilderness of innocent malice. A”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“Just a foul stench, as if every dead man in the vicinity had sat up and expelled a breath,”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“There is in our natures a calamitous hunger for consummation.”
― Clive Barker, Chiliad: A Meditation

“The true Wonderland was not like that, he knew. It was as much shadow as sunlight, and its mysteries could only be unveiled when your wits were about used up and your mind close to cracking.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“Нищо няма начало.
Няма първи миг, няма една дума или едно място, които да поставят началото на тази, или която и да е история.
Винаги може да се проследят нишките назад, до някоя предишна приказка, и до още по-ранни приказки — макар че колкото по-далечен става гласът на разказвача, толкова по-слаби изглеждат връзките — всяка епоха изисква приказката да се разказва така, сякаш е създадена през нея.
Така езичниците стават светци, трагичното — смешно, влюбените стават сантиментални, а демоните — механични играчки.
Нищо не е неизменно. Совалката влиза и излиза, факти и измислици, дух и материя, втъкани в мотиви, а общото помежду им е може би само това: сред тях е скрит филигран, който с времето ще се превърне в един свят.

В такъв случай мястото, което ще изберем за начало, трябва да бъде произволно.
Някъде между полузабравено минало и бъдеще, което засега сме зърнали само за миг.”
― Clive Barker , Weave World

“but as his years advanced Lewis had seen less and less purpose in distinguishing between fact and fiction.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 2

“watching the ice-floes dance together on the black water.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 2

“He stood dressed in voluminous robes of thrice-burned silk (the blackest, most portentous; the silk of all melancholias) and studied the lightless waters of the Izabella as the barge sped on.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Brooding only looks good in the movies.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn't care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he'd had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes; sometimes women; even children. Ol' Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“La oscuridad también ha de desempeñar un papel. Sin ella, ¿cómo sabríamos que caminamos por la senda de la luz? Solamente cuando sus pretensiones se crecen debemos enfrentarnos a ella, domarla y a veces –llegado el caso- someterla durante un tiempo. Después se erguirá de nuevo, como debe ser.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“The Hell Priest had begun to utter what sounded like a cross between a chant and an equation: numbers and words intertwined.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“If you want to be a big success then it becomes a dick showing contest, and that's not what it's about. It can't be about 'My book sold more copies than your book.' It can't be about 'More people went to see my movie than went to see your movie.' If it is about that, then Danielle Steel must be an extraordinarily wonderful author because she sells so many copies. You can't do calculations that way.
What interests me is holding the vision: doing something that is yours and making sure that it can't be like anyone else's.”
― Clive Barker

“I begin. I write a draft without ever looking back. Without ever touching what's gone before. Because I think it will be shit, so I daren't look back. I write a draft. I start again. I have the text when I start the second draft and then I do the same thing a third time.
- To Linda L. Richards, The January Interview”
― Clive Barker

“With Floyd we had three hundred and ninety-eight years between us. All that bitter experience," he said, "and not one of us wise.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 5

“As Harry marveled, the Cenobite continued his brutal effort of making new adjustments to his own flesh so as to fit the Devil’s suit: first a slice off his other hip, down to the red meat; then up to his arms, slicing away the flesh at the back of his triceps; and passing the knife from left hand to right and back again, cutting effortlessly with either. The area around his feet looked like the floor of a butcher’s store. Cobs and slices of fatty meat were scattered everywhere.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels