Books of Blood Quotes

“There was a memory and a promise of blood in the air.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“I don't want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies...

"In the Hills, the Cities”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“Minds weren't pictures at an exhibition, all numbered, and hung in order of influence, one marked "Cunning," the next, "Impressionable." They were scrawls; they were sprawling splashes of graffiti, unpredictable, unconfinable.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Kaufman almost smiled at the perfection of its horror. He felt an offer of insanity tickling the base of his skull, tempting him into oblivion, promising a blank indifference to the world.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“He was to be their page, their book, the vessel for their autobiographies. A book of blood. A book made of blood. A book written in blood.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Kaufman calculated the risks of his situation: the mathematics of panic.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“There was no harm done; and what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“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

“He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages. It was no Palace of Delights.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Logic is the last refuge of a coward.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“The carcass closest to him was the remains of the pimply youth he'd seen in Car One. The body hung upside-down, swinging back and forth to the rhythm of the train, in unison with its three fellows; an obscene danse macabre. Its arms dangled loosely from the shoulder joints, into which gashes an inch or two deep had been made, so the bodies would hang more neatly.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“He was to be used to record their testaments. He was to be their page, their book, the vessel for their autobiographies. A book of blood. A book made of blood. A book written in blood. She thought of the grimoires that had been made of dead human skin: she'd seen them, touched them. She thought of the tattoos she'd seen: freak show exhibits some of them, others just shirtless laborers in the street with a message to their mothers pricked across their backs. It was not unknown, to write a book of blood.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Es war ekelerregend, es war sauberste Arbeit, und es verwirrte zutiefst.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“Si el amor se alimenta de música, seguid tocando"
(Shakepeare)”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“Lo tocó como nunca antes se había atrevido a hacerlo, acariciando su cuerpo con la punta de los dedos muy, muy suavemente, recorriendo la piel levantada como una mujer ciega leyendo braille.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“And if it killed them, this monster, then at least they would have glimpsed a miracle, known this terrible majesty for a brief moment. It seemed a fair exchange.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die—”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“If nothing lets to make us happy both But this my masculine usurp’d attire, Do not embrace me till each circumstance Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump That I am Viola.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“It was not an ambitious creature. All it wanted at that moment, beyond any other dream, was to take this human’s skull between its palms and make a nonsense of it. Crush it to smithereens, and pour the hot thought out on to the snow. To be done with Jack J. Polo, forever and forever. Was that so much to ask?”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“To a creature trained to put its meddling fingers into the wounds of the human psyche, Polo offered a surface so glacial, so utterly without distinguishing marks, as to deny malice any hold whatsoever.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“After all, he thought, does the beef salute the butcher as it throbs to its knees?”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“It was no Palace of Delights. It bred death, not pleasure.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“It’s best to be prepared for the worst, after all, and wise to learn to walk before breath runs out.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Of all the powers that made the system manifest, love, and its companion, passion, and their companion, loss, were the most potent.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Whatever violence had been done there, it had opened the house up, as surely as a knife slits a fish’s belly; and through that cut, that wound in the world, the dead peered out, and had their say.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“The dead have highways. They run, unerring lines of ghost-trains, of dream-carriages, across the wasteland behind our lives, bearing an endless traffic of departed souls. Their thrum and throb can be heard in the broken places of the world, through cracks made by acts of cruelty, violence and depravity. Their freight, the wandering dead, can be glimpsed when the heart is close to bursting, and sights that should be hidden come plainly into view.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Each man, woman and child in that seething tower was sightless. They saw only through the eyes of the city. They were thoughtless, but to think the city’s thoughts. And they believed themselves deathless, in their lumbering, relentless strength. Vast and mad and deathless.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“And that face. It was wonderfully alive, the features playing the story of her speech with delicate economy.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“director is the loneliest creature on God’s earth. He knows what’s good and bad in a show, or he should if he’s worth his salt, and he has to carry that information around with him and keep smiling.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1