A Haunting of Horrors Quotes

“This is an age when men hide their deepest fears and instincts behind a mask of rationality. Mankind has become a herd of sheep which does not believe in the existence of wolves.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“You don’t believe Hobbamock is invincible?” “No. My people centuries ago proved that. He is powerful— and gaining strength with each new child. But I do not think he is invincible . . . yet. Could he become invincible? Could he gain so much strength that nothing could stop him? This is a question that has kept me up nights.” “But you’re convinced he can be defeated?” “Absolutely.” “By a kid carrying some kind of magic spear.” “Yes,” Charlie said softly. “I had . . . an experience, what Quidnecks call pniese. What your Bible calls a revelation or apocalypse. The pniese made everything clear.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Abbie had learned a thing or two about hospitals during her three-day stay. She’d learned that when someone said, “This will only hurt a little bit,” what he really meant was, “Nothing ever hurt this bad.” She’d learned that the steel instruments they touched you with were cold, as if they kept them in the freezer. She’d learned that when you felt well enough for a soda, they brought you too little. She’d learned that there were rules for everything, including when people could come see you, and who could come see you, and what you could wear, and what time you had to get up. She’d learned that people in hospitals could Pass Away.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Good! Brad thought. Great! I can see the headline now: MORGANTOWN MYSTERY DISEASE FELLS ALL CHILDREN, BUT TOLL PALES IN COMPARISON WITH BLACK DEATH. CDC OFFICIALS GREATLY RELIEVED!”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“The old Arab epigram drifted into his mind, that God invented silk so that women could be naked in clothes,”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Garris had pet names for all of them. Mahler was the Mad Doktor. Franz Liszt was Son of Lovecraft. Mendelssohn was Santa Claus Meets the Hell’s Angels. Beethoven was the High School Principal.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Merridale was as self-centered as a Broadway star on opening night.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Gossip? Me? How would I know about such things?” “Don’t think of it as gossip. Think of it as rumor and innuendo.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“The customers were mainly people middle-aged or older, and they’d probably take a sledge hammer to anything that spewed out the top forty. This was Lawrence Welk country. A wild tune was a polka.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“It’s just that I think we should be responsible for our friends, is all. If we’re not, why bother to have friends?”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Batman was the only D.C. title in the bunch, and just barely. He had liked the movies more than the books, but there was something about the character that he just couldn’t dismiss. Maybe it was the fact that Batman was just a man with a neat suit. No super powers, no glowing rocks, no fast-motion – just a man with a mission. Man with a mission.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Bosco Bob! Help!” There were no returning shouts of “I’ll save you” from any cavalry, and Jazz just knew he was going to wind up in a road gang chained between guys named Bubba and Maurice.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“I can’t believe you came down here alone. Why, Deb?” “Why not?” “That’s a reason?” “Sure, it’s the best one.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“The worst thing that happens is there’s an earthquake and we all get sucked into a river of molten lava.” “Well …” Ruth said. “That won’t hurt much.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule, Nietzsche had said.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“He refused to think about how at the age of forty-eight he could conclude, without any satisfaction at all, that he’d been right his entire life for being a bitterly cynical bastard.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Jazz had an intuition about such things, the guy could read your eyes like few else could. He was famous for his sarcasm, wit, and dramatics, as well as for holding tightly to a world record for coitus interruptus. He’d been found on floors and rooftops, in taco stands, ladies’ shoes and underwear departments, the DMV—he’d been found by UPS drivers, cops in the park, beach patrol, meter readers, meter maids, meter maids’ boyfriends while on rooftops with the meter maids, National Guardsmen out on maneuvers.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“The doctor paused and measured his words carefully, scratching and stroking at his wiry broad mustache as if it were a beloved terrier curled under his nose. Matthew wondered what other psychiatrists saw in that repetitive gesture—masturbation? obsession for a long-gone pet?”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“There’s an old Quidneck saying about fools: The only thing worse than one of them is two of them.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“He had not put the light over the garage door on, or the porch light on, or any outside light. They would be visible from the road. He had the crazy idea that light would draw attention to him, could somehow be a magnet for someone (who? the cops? the ASPCA? St. Francis of Assisi?) to discover what he’d done. That was the last thing he needed now.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“His mother might not believe him, but here in the hospital, why, they would have to believe him. You couldn’t have wolves running around loose in a hospital. No, they wouldn’t allow that. Hospitals had rules, and one of them probably was NO WOLVES.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“But Mom was the craziest. The gun had really sent her into outer space. After finding it, she’d beaten him with a wooden spoon—so hard that he couldn’t sit down the rest of the day, only lie on his stomach in bed.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Although charming when the situation demanded, Brad would never be accused of being happy-go-lucky. He was intelligent, and like most intelligent people, he could be moody, withdrawn, especially when bothered or . . . Thomasine hesitated to say scared.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Abbie didn’t know what to make of this man Thomasine had convinced Brad to invite over for dinner. She spent most of the meal being alternately awed and itchingly curious. He was a real live Indian. On that point Thomasine had been emphatic. But except for his long, dark, braided hair (which unquestionably was an Indian touch), Charlie Moonlight didn’t look like any pictures she’d ever seen, and during the Indian phase that had preceded dinosaurs more than a year ago, Brad had buried her in books about Native Americans. He didn’t wear a loincloth or a deerskin coat; he was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. And he wore a watch. A digital watch, the same kind Daddy wore.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“George Moonlight had introduced his only son to the woods before Charlie could walk. He’d taught him to hunt, trap, fish, make squirrel stew, skin a deer, build a birchbark canoe, construct a wigwam for shelter, distinguish the edible mushrooms from the poisonous ones, start a blazing fire without matches, find his way through fifty miles of virgin forest without compass or map. He’d taught him to appreciate the sound of a mother quail protecting her babies, the rich smell of a fall day, the crispness of a winter night, the majesty of a hawk soaring across a cloudless sky, the gentle tranquility and harmony of snow blanketing a field. He’d taught him to respect Mother Earth, drilling into his head the Quidnecks’ three commandments: Take only what you need; use all that you take; leave something for tomorrow.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“The power of blood, Charlie thought, and there was no small degree of pride in the thought. No matter what else you do in this life, no matter where you go, what you profess to believe, you can’t escape the power of blood.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Straining against her leash, the puppy tried to go a hundred different ways at once.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Yeah, you’re being paranoid all right, pal, Brad concluded, but a little paranoia never hurt anyone. Like that dude said, it ain’t paranoia if the bastards really are watchin’.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“It happened while he was clandestinely playing Rambo, a game his mother had outlawed for reasons he didn’t buy. She said it had to do with guns being bad and there being altogether too much violence in the world—especially America, where two Kennedys had been ass-sass-inated, which he understood to mean killed in a particularly bad way.”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

“Why would an editor at The New York Times making, let’s see”—the middle-aged man behind the mahogany desk glanced at Brad’s letter and some notes he’d scribbled on it—”making seventy-three thousand dollars a year want to work for a newspaper where a cat stuck in a tree overnight once was page one news with a banner headline and a three-column photo? For barely a third of what he’s earning now?”
― Chet Williamson, A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult