Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

by Thomas Ligotti

That we all deserve punishment by horror is as mystifying as it is undeniable.

we have been trained so well to accept the “order” of an unreal world that we do not rebel against it. How could we? Where pain and pleasure form a corrupt alliance against us, paradise and hell are merely different divisions in the same monstrous bureaucracy. And between these two poles exists everything we know or can ever know. It is not even possible to imagine a utopia, earthly or otherwise, that can stand up under the mildest criticism. But one must take into account the shocking fact that we live on a world that spins. After considering this truth, nothing should come as a surprise.

one thing we know is real: horror. It is so real, in fact, that we cannot be sure it could not exist without us. Yes, it needs our imaginations and our consciousness, but it does not ask or require our consent to use them. Indeed, horror

Once and for all, let us speak the paradox aloud: “We have been force-fed for so long the shudders of a thousand graveyards that at last, seeking a macabre redemption, a salvation by horror, we willingly consume the terrors of the tomb . . . and find them to our liking.”

The extraordinary is a province of the solitary soul.

Life is a nightmare that leaves its mark upon you in order to prove that it is, in fact, real.

everything in the unreal points to the infinite,

What remained lost was the revelation that nothing ever known has ended in glory; that all which ends does so in exhaustion, confusion, and debris.

Have you ever heard of a book, an extremely special book, that is not . . . yes, that is not about something, but actually is that something?”

Thus began Victor Keirion’s preoccupation with a certain book and a certain hallucinated world, though to make a distinction between these two phenomena ultimately seemed an error. The book, indeed, did not merely describe that strange world but, in some obscure fashion, was a true composition of the thing itself, its very form incarnate.