stix_antics > stix_antics's Quotes

“Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and perceptions that find perfect expression in fiction. We are built this way, we create stories by reflex, unstoppably. But this elegant system really works best when the elements of the emerging story, whether is is being written or being read, are taken as literal fact. Almost always, to respond to the particulars of the fantastic as if they were metaphorical or allegorical is to drain them of vitality.”
― Peter Straub, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps

“What would be frightening about me jumping out of the bush wearing a pig mask is not the sudden surprise, not me, and not the pig mask, but that the ordinary world had split open for a moment to reveal some possibility never previously considered.”
― Peter Straub

“I have been sometimes way too attracted by my own villains because in a way they seem to hold the secret to the heart of the narrative.”
― Peter Straub

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“God always punishes us for what we can't imagine.”
― Stephen King, Duma Key

“Art should be a place of hope.”
― Stephen King, Duma Key

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love”
― Clive Barker

“We’re too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“That which is imagined can never be lost.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“We burn so hard, but we shed so little light; it makes us crazy and sad.”
― Clive Barker, Galilee

“A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“you must be careful with kindness. It's usually mistaken for weakness by stupid people.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blooms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“Ideas. I'm possessed by ideas. Ideas that are as old as humanity, maybe older, right? Maybe those ideas were out there just floating around before us, just waiting to be thought up. Maybe we don't think them, we pluck them out from another dimension or another mind.”
― Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts

“No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end... there's also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing alone with everyone and everything else.”
― Paul Tremblay, The Cabin at the End of the World

“Everyone is fucked up, Luke. Damaged. We’re all messed up, underneath. Doesn’t matter what kind of house you live in.”
― Adam Nevill, The Ritual

“Hell was a living place inside every membrane of flesh that temporarily passed itself off as human.”
― Adam Nevill, Apartment 16