The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories Quotes

“That is because the ghost story is not about guessing an ending, it’s about dreading its inevitable arrival.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing – closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning.”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“beauties fell in love with the same man, and he no better than a foreign musician, whom their father had”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

“I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, and apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet, with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! Not even an outline, – a vapour!”
― Michael Newton, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce