The Great and Secret Show Quotes

“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.
Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd be good news?”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“The extraordinary's the norm.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Beautiful," Grillo said.
"Would Swift approve?"
"Fuck Swift."
"Somebody should have.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Never a truer word said or thought. Anything was possible.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Before she could look to find a wound he had control of the vision once again, but like a juggler attempting to hold too many balls in the air catching one meant loosing another.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“I am inevitable.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Stories had a way of doing that, in Grillo’s experience. It was his belief that nothing, but nothing, could stay secret, however powerful the forces with interests vested in silence. Conspirators might conspire and thugs attempt to gag but the truth, or an approximation of same, would show itself sooner or later, very often in the unlikeliest form. It was seldom hard facts that revealed the life behind the life. It was rumour, graffiti, strip cartoons and love songs.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Memory, prophecy and fantasy—the past, the future and the dreaming moment between—are all one country, living one immortal day. To know that is Wisdom. To use it is the Art.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Nothing, I had come to believe by the end, was more illusory than the idea of ending.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“He wouldn’t be remembered well.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“In a town where words were cheap, talk could be expensive.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Did that mean they were both tainted then? Or was it not a question of sin and innocence; darkness and light? Did they somehow stand between the extremes, in a place reserved for lovers?”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius, they advised. Let the obscure be explained by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“This idea stayed with me for several years before I found an adequate way to express it. I called the sea Quiddity, and slowly developed a mythology around it. Human beings would enter Quiddity, the dream-sea, three times, I decided. Once when they were born, once when they slept beside the person they would love most in their lives, and once before they died. Three life-changing immersions in the sea of the unconscious. Three confrontations with the secret show of our dreams.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“Damn fool that she was to have valued pride over sensation.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“I never wanted my body except as a vehicle. I never really wanted anything at all except to be sky.”
― Clive Barker, THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW

“this is why men go underground. To remember why they live in the sun.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“He looked like a chided child, she thought. Any pretense to machismo had been stripped from him. He was a raw, snotty child. Pathetic and dangerous: the inevitable combination.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show

“telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was.”
― Clive Barker, The Great And Secret Show