Haunted Castles Quotes

“You shudder deliciously. It becomes you.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“The castle is situated at the terminus of a long and upward-winding mountain road. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the world, for there is little about it to suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities that might assure a wayfarer of welcome. Rather, this vast edifice of stone exudes an austerity, cold and repellent, a hint of ancient mysteries long buried, an effluvium of medieval dankness and decay. At night, and most particularly on nights when the moon is slim or cloud-enshrouded, it is a heavy blot upon the horizon, a shadow only, without feature save for its many-turreted outline; and should the moon be temporarily released from her cloudy confinement, her fugitive rays lend scant comfort, for they but serve to throw the castle into sudden, startling chiaroscuro, its windows fleetingly assuming the appearance of sightless though all-seeing orbs, its portcullis becoming for an instant a gaping mouth, its entire form striking the physical and the mental eye as would the sight of a giant skull.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“Man is an indolent creature, but light the fire of fear under him, and of what miracles is he not capable.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“But as I sat in that bed, the book in my hands, the city outside silent, I had reason to feel as if a hand from some sub-zero hell had reached up and laid itself-oh, very gently-upon my heart.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“Now, the story makes no reference to specific years—it uses that eighteen-followed-by-a-dash business which writers were so fond of in those days, I’ve never understood why”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“offer you a veritable Oriental paradise of unlimited raptures!” He”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“Death is a kind of nakedness, a kind of indecency, a kind of faux pas. Unless we have known the dead person well enough to experience true loss, or unless we have wronged the dead person enough to experience guilt, the only emotion we can experience is embarrassment.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“In our youth we sow wild oats; in our dotage we reap pills.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories