Petter > Petter's Quotes

“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, Weaveworld

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?

So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something - you know, one of those big bastards - one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?' (...)
'I really don't know, Dad,' (...)
'Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!' (...) 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?'
(...)
'Right, Dad,' he says.
(...)
'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it - as we say in the trade - those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?'
'OK, Dad,' says the boy (...)
'Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?'
Bunny Junior nods.
'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?'
'OK, Dad.'
'Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth - the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies - every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-riden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone.
'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior.
'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.'
'And what's that, Dad?'
'Hope... you know... the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.”
― Nick Cave, The Death of Bunny Munro

“The arrival in Paris, as grim as ever. The leprous façades of the Pont Cardinet flats, behind which one invariably imagines retired folk agonizing alongside their cat Poucette which is eating up half their pension with its Friskies. Those weird metal structures that indecently mount each other to form a grid of overhead wires. And the inevitable advertising hoardings flashing by, gaudy and repellent. ‘A gay and changing spectacle on the walls.’ Bullshit. Pure fucking bullshit.”
― Michel Houellebecq

“And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.”
― Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust

“Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much. Now,”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Consider the roots of a simple and mundane action, for instance, buying bread for your breakfast. A farmer has grown the grain in a field carved from wilderness by his ancestors; in the ancient city a miller has ground the flour and a baker prepared the loaf; the vendor has transported it to your house in a cart built by a cartwright and his apprentices. Even the donkey that draws the cart, what stories could she not tell if you could decipher her braying? And then you yourself hand over a coin of copper dug from the very heart of the earth, you who have risen from a bed of dreams and darkness to stand in the light of the vast and terrifying sun. Are there not a thousand strands woven together into this tapestry of a morning meal? How then can you expect that the omens of great events should be easy to unravel? The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll”
― Katharine Kerr, A Time of Omens

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Conan stared at the hand holding the pendant. The grim god of his Cimmerian northcountry, Crom, Lord of the Mound, gave a man only life and will. What he did with them, or failed to do, was up to him alone. Life and will.”
― Robert Jordan, Conan Chronicles 1

“Wenn du wissen willst, wie ein Mensch ist, dann sieh dir genau an, wie er seine Untergebenen behandelt, nicht die Gleichrangigen.«”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch

“The roof the muscular youth traveled came to an end, and he peered down into the blackness hiding the paving stones of the street, four stories below. His eyes were frozen sapphires, and his face, a square-cut lion’s mane of black held back from it by a leather cord, showed several ordinary lifetimes’ experience despite its youth.”
― Robert Jordan, Conan Chronicles 2

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Everyone has his cross to bear.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”
― Clive Barker

“We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Absolute Midnight