Bitter Waters Quotes

“. . . the fact that the fictional accounts did exist and were so widely known and recognized did lend a kind of paradoxical security to the creatures that inspired them. To most ordinary adults, the fact that there was a peculiar and extremely attractive Scottish minor peer named Ruthven, with grey eyes, was not a problem since the gorgeous grey-eyed Lord Ruthven in the book was a vampire and thus not real: the book was fiction. There could not be a real version of an imaginary monster, because the monster was a made-up character in a book. This tautology worked on people who didn't have much imagination of their own, and on people who did but were highly skilled at squashing it underneath common sense. It did not work anywhere near as well on, say, children.”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters

“There was a peculiar kind of awkwardness for a monster whose continued safety and well-being depended on the world not thinking they were real being known to that world, albeit inaccurately, through a famous work of fiction. Shells of falsehood inside shells of truth. The real problem, of course, was that each of the creatures described in the classic-horror-lit pantheon at one point or another had caught the eye and pen of an author sufficiently deeply to have inspired the subsequent work: it was effectively their own fault for being memorable. There was also the chicken-versus-egg aspect to consider. To what extent did the events in the fictional narrative influence the actual experience of the creature they purported to describe?”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters

“People who punish children for reading ought to be tied up in knots and roasted”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters

“Almost all the stories about vampires are a load of old rubbish," he said. "I don't burst into flames in sunlight, I show up in mirrors, I don't wear evening dress and a cloak all the time, I do drink wine, and I don't go around biting people's necks all willy-nilly and sucking out all of their blood.”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters

“He did not know it, and would never have thought of such a thing in so many words, but he had started to make himself into a person rather than a sack of hideous insecurities held together with bad intentions and despair.”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters

“People who punish children for reading ought to be tied up in knots and roasted,” said Ruthven.”
― Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters