Clive Barker > Quotes

“Youth inhabits his face
like a hermit crab its borrowed shell.
He will outgrow his shelter sooner than he thinks.
Only then will he know what it is to be naked.”
― Clive Barker

“You won’t simply witness what is going to unfold in Hell from this point outward; you will make a testament of it, wherein my acts and my philosophies will be recounted in full detail. They will be my Gospels, and I will forbid you nothing in their chapters and verses, as long as it is observed truth, however far from my ideal of myself I may fall.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“It feels like I've died," he said to Caz when he'd finished.
"Well, you didn't."
"And I should be grateful, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I'm not.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“doubt.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always: A Fable

“It was what his mother would have done in the circumstances. Boiled some fresh water, warmed the pot and counted out the spoonfuls of tea. Setting domestic order against the chaos, in the hope of winning some temporary reprieve from the vale of tears.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“Well, I am denying it. You think the world revolves around sex. It’s pathetic.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Like a prisoner without hope of parole she took what entertainment she could find to ease the passage of time.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“He offered her a grin designed for better teeth.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“—¿Está seguro de que quiere que la mujer acabe muerta?—dijo Pai—.Las dudas son malas en negocios como este. Si existe la más mínima duda en su interior...
—No hay ninguna —señaló Estabrook—. Vine aquí para encontrar a un hombre que matara a mi esposa. Usted es ese hombre
—Aún la ama, ¿verdad?— preguntó Pai una vez que estuvieron fuera y de camino al coche.
—Por supuesto que la amo—confirmó Estabrook—. Por eso la quiero muerta.
-No existe la resurrección, señor Estabrook. Al menos, no para usted.
—No soy yo quien va a morir—respondió Charlie.
—Yo creo que sí—Fue la respuesta (...)—.Un hombre que mata aquello que ama muere también un poco. De eso no hay duda, ¿verdad?”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“Once you conceded defeat, life was a feather bed. In”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Come to Daddy,” he said. The phrase didn’t sound right out of Rory’s mouth. Some boys never grew to be daddies, however many children they sired.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“I don't think that the despiritualised, dehumanised culture in which we live, the McDonalds and Disney culture, does our internal lives, our mythological lives, any favours at all. In other words, to be an Outsider in this culture now is to be looking inside at a plastic world, and I think it's easier to critique that world if I don't belong to it... In Hollywood where I live now, there's a lot of having lunches, a lot of going to parties... and I will have no part of that. I'm certainly not very good at it, I don't like it and I feel a little weird about it. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be a part of the solution, and the only way I can help solve the problem of the plasticity of our world is by writing, by painting and by making my work, so I stay where I can do that, which is at my desk, in my studio. I will venture out when I need to sell a book or exhibit my paintings, but the rest of the time my job is to be here and imagine.”
― Clive Barker

“We're not going anywhere," Will said with unshakeable conviction, "because we don't come from anywhere. We're spontaneous events. We just appear in the middle of families. And we'll keep appearing. Even if the plague killed every homosexual on the planet, it wouldn't be extinction, because there's queer babies being born every minute. It's like magic." He grinned at the notion. "You know, that's exactly what it is. It's magic.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“The demon – what did Harry call him? Dick face? Pinprick? Pinhead! That was it.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Nobody ever just passed through; experience always left its mark.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 5

“He gave a moment’s consideration to the possibility of lingering to wash his face and hands (maybe even to changing his puke-splattered shirt), but he decided to forgo cleanliness in favor of making a fast exit.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than “I’ll never leave you”.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“Do unto others, boy, before they do unto you.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“When you hire Harry D’Amour, things have a tendency to become … complicated.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“All rising to great place is by a winding stair. —Sir Francis Bacon,”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“He was not happier at his mother’s nipple than in that ring of demons.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 2

“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than “I’ll never leave you.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“Did that mean they were both tainted then? Or was it not a question of sin and innocence; darkness and light? Did they somehow stand between the extremes, in a place reserved for lovers?”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Good horror fiction deals with taboos. It must always go to the limits of what is acceptable.”
― Clive Barker

“She was indeed tired , as she'd claimed , but it wasn't the cooking that exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for the damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She'd called them friends once , these half-wits , with their poor jokes and poorer pretensions.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“This idea stayed with me for several years before I found an adequate way to express it. I called the sea Quiddity, and slowly developed a mythology around it. Human beings would enter Quiddity, the dream-sea, three times, I decided. Once when they were born, once when they slept beside the person they would love most in their lives, and once before they died. Three life-changing immersions in the sea of the unconscious. Three confrontations with the secret show of our dreams.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. So”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“God's an astronaut
Oz is over the rainbow
and Median is where the monsters live.”
― Clive Barker-Cabal

“was enough to know they had no Devil on their backs. Just old humanity, cheated of love, and ready to pull down the world on its head.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Sometimes nature is even crueller than politics.”
― Clive Barker, Tonight, Again