Clive Barker > Quotes

“Keep it simple. Trust your imagination. Discover what is unique about your imagination. Don’t simply read a story and copy it.
I go into myself. Then I transcribe what visions I have. If those ideas are original, and you are devoted, you will go far.”
― Clive Barker

“He lay with a pack of panting dogs on a hill overlooking plains where antelope grazed. He marched with ants, and labored in the rigors of the nest, filing eggs. He danced the mating dance of the bower bird, and slept on a warm rock with his lizard kin. He was a cloud. He was the shadow of a cloud. He was the moon that cast the shadow of a cloud. He was a blind fish; he was a shoal; he was a whale; he was the sea. He was the lord of all he surveyed. He was a worm in the dung of a kite. He did not grieve, knowing his life was a day long, or an hour. He did not wonder who made him. He did not wish to be other. He did not pray. He did not hope. He only was, and was, and was, and that was the joy of it.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“Remember, Lucius, that everything you learn is already a part of you, even to the Godhead Itself. Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing"--there the Maestro stopped and shuddered, as though he had a presentiment--"fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain. Will you remember those things?”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“I swear, the bigger the bully, the smaller the dick.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Time would be precious from now on. It would tick by, of course, as it always had, but Harvey was determined he wouldn’t waste it with sighs and complaints. He’d fill every moment with the seasons he’d found in his heart: hopes like birds on a spring branch; happiness like a warm summer sun; magic like the rising mists of autumn. And best of all, love; love enough for a thousand Christmases.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night, the bereaved from crying out too loud, the young in summer from falling in love with the human.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“In my Art
I have but
one fear:
that we will
fail to be
fearless.”
― Clive Barker, Tonight, Again

“I am inevitable.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“You cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“The World-Soul is sick, Harry, crazy-sick. And if we don’t each do our part and try to get to the root of its pain and burn it out, then everything is for nothing.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“You leave marks on people, Gentle. That’s a responsibility you can’t just shrug off.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: A spellbinding epic fantasy novel

“I write from the dream. I discovered long ago, that to lead a life during the day that is not overwhelmed with writing, the first thing I did was cut my writing time down. When I wake up, I have my coffee and breakfast bar, and go to work. I try to do this before I wake up too much, before the real day shifts into the dream world I have recently left. I work while the ghost of those dreams is still with me. I sit down and write, and as soon as I feel I’ve said what I have to say for the day, I stop working. I do have the goal of managing at least three to five pages a day, but sometimes I manage more. My true work day, not business calls, managing life, but the work and joy of writing, is about three hours. I let the dream decipher itself. And when the edges of it become ragged, I stop.”
― Clive Barker, Where Nightmares Come From

“Every man is his own Mephistopheles, don’t you think?”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“A skin was nothing. Pigs had skins; snakes had skins. They were knitted of dead cells, shed and grown and shed again. But a name? That was a spell, which summoned memories.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“What do the good know?’ he said. ‘Except what the bad teach them by their excesses?”
― Clive Barker, The Forbidden

“And the stories she'd been told, were they confessions of uncommitted crimes, accounts of the worst imaginable, imagined to keep fiction from becoming fact? The thought chased its own tail: these terrible stories still needed a first cause, a well-spring from which they leaped... Were these inventions common currency, as Purcell had claimed? Was there a place, however small, reserved in every heart for the monstrous?”
― Clive Barker

“Suzanna had argued with zealots before — her brother had been born again at twenty-three, and given his life to Christ — she knew from experience there was no gainsaying the bigotry of faith.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“You’re being watched too, remember?”
“I wasn’t aware—”
“That some of the screens you’re looking at are looking at you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they are.”
― Clive Barker

“Despite his intent, tears sprang to his eyes, and he went into her embrace, both of them sobbing freely, like enemies joined by a common loss or lovers about to be parted. Or else souls who could not remember whether they were lovers or enemies and were weeping at their own confusion.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“They had a leader. Some rebel. Shite! I don’t remember his name. You know me and names. He was a dickhead and everybody says so. And old Bitch Tits kicked him down here. He started some rebellion.” “Lucifer?” “That’s the one. Lucifer. They prayed to Lucifer.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Winning is beauty. It is like life itself.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Here was a place sacred to the dead, who were not the living ceased, but almost another species, requiring rites and prayers that belonged uniquely to them.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“My imagination is my polestar; I steer by that.”
― Clive Barker

“And sitting there against the wall, listening to Billy's inhalations and exhalations, and watching the light in the glass and through the glass, Cleve knew without doubt that even if he escaped this trap, it was only a temporary respite; that this long night, its minutes, its hours, were a foretaste of a longer vigil. He almost despaired then; felt his soul sink into a hole from which there seemed to be no hope of retrieval. Here was the real world; he wept. Not joy, not light, not looking forward; only this waiting in ignorance, without hope, even of fear, for fear came only to those with dreams to lose.”
― Clive Barker, In the Flesh

“Talk of Power and Might would always attract an audience. Lords never went out of fashion.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“The places where death comes to take love away, where we lose each other and lose ourselves; that's where the connections begin. It takes a brave soul to look there and not despair."

"I've tried to be brave," she said.

"I know," he said softly. "I know.”
― Clive Barker, Everville

“Has anyone here ever heard of the Harrowing?” Dale asked, breaking the silence. No one replied. “It was in the time between Christ’s crucifixion and his Resurrection,” he went on. “The story goes, Christ went down into Hell, walked among the damned, and set many of them free. Then he returned to Earth and broke the bondage of death. It’s supposedly the first and only amnesty Hell has ever known.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“I have been, I think, altogether disparaging about the ‘escapist’ elements of the genre, emphasizing its powers to address social, moral and even philosophical issues at the expense of celebrating its dreamier virtues. I took this position out of a genuine desire to defend a fictional form I love from accusations of triviality and triteness, but my zeal led me astray. Yes, fantastic fiction can be intricately woven into the texture of our daily lives, addressing important issues in fabulist form. But it also serves to release us for a time from the definitions that confine our daily selves; to unplug us from a world that wounds and disappoints us, allowing us to venture into places of magic and transformation.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World