Gothic Horror Quotes

Vijaya prefers to eat alone. Rob ushered her into the room and held a chair for her, then sat across from her. "Many Indians regard eating as something that should be done in private. Considering the table manners of some of our best people, one can see their point."
Patricia Frances Rowell ~ Patricia Frances Rowell

Man's fears lie beneath a veil of courage. ~ Grandaddy BAD

I'd love for readers to read what books are about so that if they are expecting happy endings in dark horror novels, they won't reach for the Vallium or something worse! ~ Carole Gill

Listen,
listen with your eyes,
and your lips.
Listen with your skin,
and your blood.
Can you hear us,
at the edges? ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

It was so close to October that Halloween was knocking at his heart. ~ Barry Eysman

Is this it? Johann wondered. The longer fall I was looking for? To know that I was summoned up from the dark ether to do a monster's deeds for Hallandrette's truest son? And when our work is done, I will carry him to the bottom of the sea, where we both belong. Deep beneath the silt our bones will turn to salt. ~ Jennifer Giesbrecht

We're in high school. If it didn't come from the school cafeteria, we like it. ~ S.K.N. Hammerstone

All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you. ~ Jaye Frances

I have learned one lesson in all this and I will share it knowing it will do no one any good. The lesson is this: "There are none more complicit in one's undoing than one's own heart". ~ James Pratt

Think about the people who come here," Nick says. "Writers and artists, scientists and captains of industry. Think of all they give to the world. Now think of yourself, Jules. What are you? What do you offer? Nothing. ~ Riley Sager

Admitting defeat? How un-huntress like of you. ~ Yvonne Nicolas

The original Gothic horror tales focused on personalities deformed through loneliness. Ghouls, vampires, werewolves: all made, not born. But the isolation? Are even such as these ever truly alone? Perhaps the psyche has always been more complex than that, desire eternally more potent than terror. Surely, none prowl entirely in solitude. ~ Robert Dunbar

At its heart, Gothic Fiction is the introvert's "Hero's Journey" where heroes and heroines must navigate the uncharted territory of the mind in order to solve the mystery of their life's adventure. ~ Barrymore Tebbs

These streets belong to us because we decided not to punch the time clock. We decided to see what and f*ck is going on out here when all those other people are going to sleep. So we walk from dusk until dawn and we rule. ~ Keith Kekic

Laying here in my grave..at last.. I am finally alone. ~ Grandaddy BAD

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Our very existence refuses your laws and
your science, your religions and your
philosophies. ~ B.E. Scully

Ha!' cackled the fiend, 'I expect you'd like revenge on that husband of yours. Murder shouldn't go unpunished, and no creature enjoys delivering chastisement as much as I. What about giving him a taste of his own medicine? If you'd be so kind as to lend me your body, I'll set him dancing to my tune.'

The wife's spectre grimaced and nodded, at which the wicked Likho stripped off the nightgown, then the dead woman's pliant skin, peeling back the flaccid folds. These it left in a slack heap.

It gobbled her flesh and sucked the bones clean. These it hid behind the stove, before inserting itself inside the empty, wrinkled carcass, taking the former position of the corpse. Its fat tongue swiped the last juices from around its lips.

When the husband returned home, all was as it had been; there was not a speck of blood to be seen, although the strangest smell of rotten eggs lingered ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Good and evil exist in all of us.
a moment's temptation takes us on a wrong path.
On that path may lurk foul fiends,
inhuman, yet feeding, needing
all our weaknesses: vanity, indolence and envy,
Easy fruits for evil appetites,
our flesh, a tasty afterthought,
our bones flung asunder. ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Must beauty blossom, rooted in decay,
And night devour its flaming hues alway? ~ Clark Ashton Smith

You were dropped as a child, weren't you?" Varen asked her.
"Maybe once or twice," Gwen said, "but at least I wasn't raised by highly literate vampires who, every night just before bed, fed me a steady diet of dark sarcasm and gothic horror fiction."
"Every morning before bed," Varen corrected. Stepping forward, he moved toward the headstone. "We slept during the day. ~ Kelly Creagh

The wicked have no empathy for the pure. ~ Haley Newlin

It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. ~ Shirley Jackson

Inside, there was a bed, and upon the bed there was a woman. More beautiful was she even than the damask rose while her scent, drifting through the open window, was that of the night dew. Her hair was silken as the raven's wing. Quite naked, she lay, so still upon the bed, her eyes closed in reverie.

The young man looked first upon her breasts, where her hand rested. And upon each breast, there was a rosebud nipple. Upon each nipple there was a tip most tender. Upon each tip there was a milky drop.

Chin lifted, lips parted, she milked her maiden breast.

'What I would give to suckle at that teat,' thought he.

from 'Against Faithlessness' in Cautionary Tales ~ Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Walk with this tomorrow night. If nothing happens, then
don't come back. Forget about us, this place, but if you feel the
Nightwalker in you awaken, then return to where you belong.
Return to me, and the streets will run red with blood. ~ Keith Kekic

Pushing through some viney branches, she comes into a clearing andfinds a sight that makes her hush
and not just her voice but every part of her, like feeling silence in her deep guts ...
It's something she can feel in the back of her throat, her dislike of the scene
as though what she's looking upon is unholy, the conjunction of chaos and order in a forced fit where everything is stretched and bent in the wrong way like those baby legs. ~ Alden Bell

Ever since I could remember reading, I was a fan of Horror Novels, then just an Avid reader of all things dark and deeply written or off the cuff styles and not so bland and sterile as if the grammar police forensically wrote it to be safe, then re-edited it to be even more annoyingly not from an emotion but from a text book, I love dark dark fiction that's why i write it. Some of my favorite writers are Anne Rice, Hunter S. Thompson and Clive Barker, perhaps you can sense this in my writing. ~ Liesalette

That night, she was neglecting her pen in favor of rereading one of the most-favored books in her library. It was a small volume that had appeared mysteriously when she was only fifteen. Josephine still had no idea who had gifted her the lovely horror of Carmilla, but she owed her nameless benefactor an enormous debt. Her personal guess was a briefly employed footman who had seen her reading her mother's well-worn copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho and confessed his own forbidden love of Poe. The slim volume of Le Fanu's Gothic horror stories had been hidden well into adulthood. As it wasn't her father's habit to investigate her reading choices, concealment might have been more for dramatic effect than real fear of discovery. Josephine read by lamplight, curled into an old chaise and basking in the sweet isolation of darkness as she mouthed well-loved passages from her favorite vampire tale.

"For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me."

She slammed the book shut. How had she turned so morbid? For while Josephine had long known she would not live to old age, she thought she had resigned herself to it. She made a point of figh ~ Elizabeth Hunter

What have you done to my dairy?" he said. "What happened to the Black Hole of Calcutta I was saving for the setting of the Gothic horror play I was going to write one of these days? Where are all my beautiful spiders? Where are my gloomy corners, where ghoulies might lurk? What have you done with the six inches of dirt on the floor? That was good dirt. I was saving it. ~ Loretta Chase

As he sat up, he heard soft dripping sounds from the bathroom, little plips like water slipping over the edges of the tub and into the floor. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he realized where he‟d last heard that sound. His muscles tight with strain from his earlier exertions, he stood and walked warily toward the half open bathroom door and the tub beyond it. Slipping quietly past the door, he saw that the curtain was drawn, and again the shadowed figure lay behind it. One long, slim, leg dangled from the end of the tub, beads of water gliding down its length and off the polished toes. At the other end he saw a mass of auburn curls, matted deep red near the porcelain of the tub. It was the dream and the vision again, more real now, too strong to deny. Shaking, he moved toward the curtain, gagging on the sickly smell of rust and roses, feeling the thin nylon glide between thumb and palm as he pulled it back to reveal his darkest nightmare and deepest regret. He could see the crimson water now, blood bubbles gliding over its surface and clinging to the legs dangling over the tub‟s edge. When he‟d pulled the curtain completely away from the tub and around to its opposite side, he saw her face. Her eyes were closed and he saw that her lids were bruised and purple against the translucent paleness of her face, drained completely dead white under the makeup she‟d brushed on before she‟d died. Staggering by the sight of her, he knelt by the tub and extended one shaking han ~ Amanda M. Lyons

Or do you like being frightened?"

Hugh, though generally intelligent, is dense in certain ways; this is one of them.

"Why, of course, I like being frightened," I said. "I want to be made to creep and creep and creep. Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid. ~ E.F. Benson

I'm not here to change the world, just your perception of it. ~ Grandaddy BAD

Don't look so shocked. And please, please don't scream. You and I both knew that this was coming… Yes, yes, it's a mess… but the nails were having trouble penetrating so they had to go. Speaking of which… Could you get that last nail?

Vince Liberato
"Because I was Bored ~ Vince Liberato

...Okay... probably now you have read all my books up to now..., you have check out everything what I have and you are asking what more???
Check out horror and try to understand it! ~ Deyth Banger

You would keep the people in their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid, so heartless? ~ Anonymous

Well, you're to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They're sure to find him." "The pleece!" Dickie cried in horror. "Why, father, 'e ain't done nothing." "No, no, of course not," said the lady in a hurry; "but the police know all sorts of things - about where people are, I know, and what they're doing - even when they haven't done anything." "The pleece knows a jolly sight too much," said Dickie, in gloom. ~ E. Nesbit

It's the comedies and thrillers that are successful. People love horror, but in thrillers. Once you speak of pain and suffering it's a different matter. ~ Philippe Claudel

Much later, Alice would wonder what might have happened if she had gone to bed when she was supposed to. ~ Django Wexler

I'm out of the room in the next instant, like a man wanting breath, after suffocating through the horror of a burrito eating obese man's fart." - Emily Dolt ~ Nix Banner

Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling. ~ Julio Cortazar

What the hell happened to your leg?" Ang asked him.
Matt looked down at his shin, which was scraped and oozing and seemed to be caked in mud. "Crashed."
"Crashed what?" Ang asked.
"My mountain bike. We just got back."
"You crashed, then what? Rolled in dirt?"
He laughed. "Something like that actually. It's not a successful ride if you don't bleed." He must not have noticed the look of horror on my face, because he asked, suddenly enthusiastic, "You guys ride?"Angelo and I just looked at each other, and he seemed to realize that was a "no." "Too bad. Well, make yourselves at home. Beer's in the fridge. I have to get cleaned up. Kickoff's in ten minutes."
"Football?" Angelo asked.
Matt looked at his as if he had just asked if the sky was really blue. "Yeah! First game of the regular season!" We just stared blankly at him, and he just laughed and disappeared down the hall.
Angelo looked at me with a smile on his face. "Four fags watchin' football. Must be pretty fuckin' cold in hell right now. ~ Marie Sexton

I love a good harsh horror movie, when it's done well. But there are times when it feels cynical. You can tell when a filmmaker loves the genre, and you can tell when someone's just cashing in a paycheck. Then it becomes a dumbing down - a fetishisation of violence that I react very strongly against. ~ Drew Goddard

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011
A sudden vision, fraught with malevolence and darkness, obscured her sight. The face of a menacing figure turned from the shadows of his grisly handiwork and stared at Sorcha.
Her muscles tensed. By the Goddess, could he see her?
Please! No!
She wanted to scream, to run, but the vision ensnared her into the horrific moment like a fly in a spider's web. ~ Cherie De Sues

The physiologist is not a man of the world, he is a scientist, a man caught and absorbed by a scientific idea that he pursues; he no longer hears the cries of the animals, no longer sees the flowing blood, he sees only his idea: organisms that hide from him problems that he wants to discover. He doesn't feel that he is in a horrible carnage; under the influence of a scientific idea, he pursues with delight a nervous filament inside stinking and livid flesh that for any other person would be an object of disgust and horror. ~ Claude Bernard

For me, one of the most perfect times to watch a horror movie is when it's cold and raining outside and there's pretty much no outdoor activity to be done. It kind of sets the mood. ~ Kirk Hammett

Evil should not be, Detective Vera. Truly never can be. But in defining it as such, an inherent human bond with negativity confirms its very existence. Its mere acknowledgement cancels its credibility. Evil is nothing - the lack of anything of substance - made concrete as a balance to everything else. Evil is not, yet it is a part of
each human, because humans welcome its participation in their lives. They speak of it in anger or disgust, fear or even wonder - the most appropriate response - giving it a stronger foundation with every passing thought it distorts. Though within their pliable minds, they welcome it with the glee of the ignorant, nurturing the unthinkable, thinking the unimaginable, imagining the most horrid, abysmal designs, embellishing them with an insidious veracity until evil is as substantial a reality as their next breath. I strive for something else, beyond evil's claustrophobic clutches. I strive to transcend evil by becoming pure nothing. I strive as my followers strived." He paused, his ideology a cancer, spreading… "I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?" His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. ... ~ John Claude Smith

Damn." Phineas turned the Big Boy off, then noticed he'd left the box on the bed. Damn, had Zoltan seen it? He stuffed the phallus back into the box, but must have jammed too hard, for it started wiggling again.
"Stop it." He punched a button, but it merely increased its speed, the tip spiraling in wild circles.
Damn! He watched in horror. It was like a whirlybird on steroids! How could a man compete with that? He ripped the balls off it and emptied out the batteries. "Die, you freakin' dildo, die! ~ Kerrelyn Sparks

If you don't want to be scared in a horror film, don't close your eyes. Close your ears. ~ Eli Roth

Just as making an omelette & breaking eggs you can't make a horror film without breaking a few heads! ~ Kensington Gore

Nihilism is the moral equivalent of weightlessness. ~ Myself

The things a man sees when he ain't got a gun.
Watson the Caretaker ~ Stephen King

I was always a fan of horror films as a kid. ~ Jeri Ryan

I personally just want to do as many different things as I can do, whether it's comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, narrator ... You've got a documentary, I've got a voice. Animated films. Big films, small films. ~ Colin Farrell

Ironically, I wouldn't say I'm a massive horror fan. I love thrillers. ~ Carlton Cuse

That's right", she says, wiping tears from her cheeks. "You weren't with me that time I walked in on them doing the deed. Seriously Freudian horror."
"You saw your parents at the best," Mom murmurs, before Dad sweeps her into another kiss.
"Go ahead," Josie calls. "Mate in public. Tonight we won't even mind. You deserve to break a few decency laws. ~ Claudia Gray

Hiya, Aunty Wren!" Francesca shouted, waving her arms as if her aunt were several thousand feet away. "Wait a minute," she said, putting a finger to her lips, "I knows how you hates to be called 'Wren.' Should I call you Aunty Wyno? Or should I call you what Toby calls you? Toby calls you ah BEE EYE TEE SEE --"

"Aunt Wren is fine," said Wynona through clenched teeth. ~ Ash Gray

Jergen Moltmann writes, End-time histories might better be referred to as exterminism. These are acts of military, economic, or ecological violence. Anyone who talks about "the apocalypse" or "the battle of Armageddon" is providing a religious interpretation for mass human crime, and is trying to make God responsible for what human beings are doing. Nothing has a more fatal effect than the expectation of a fatal future. These "cosmic catastrophe promoters" do not awaken the faith and hope of people. The only result is a general alarmism. What Christian apocalyptic intends is not to evoke horror in the face of the end, but to encourage endurance in resisting the powers of this world. Anyone who interprets the threatening nuclear annihilation of humanity apocalyptically as Armageddon is pushing onto God the responsibility of human beings. This is the height of godlessness and irresponsibility. This type of apocalyptic must be exposed. ~ Dan Boone

Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror. ~ Julie Burchill

It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. ~ Chris Cleave

into the passenger seat, unable to forget the horror on Eliza's face as we broke into the coffin. Jack Morgan's intel had to be accurate. But I'd never be able to prove it. Mark Talbot had realized this was far bigger than any of us knew. Mary dropped me outside Private's building ~ James Patterson

No more worlds like this / No more days like that ~ Thomas Ligotti

No follower of Christ knew the shape of the earth. For many centuries this great Peasant of Palestine has been worshiped as God. Millions and millions have given their lives to his service. The wealth of the world was lavished on his shrines.

His name carried consolation to the diseased and dying. His name dispelled the darkness of death, and filled the dungeon with light. His name gave courage to the martyr, and in the midst of fire, with shriveling lips the sufferer uttered it again and again. The outcasts, the deserted, the fallen, felt that Christ was their friend, felt that he knew their sorrows and pitied their sufferings.

All this is true, and if it were all, how beautiful, how touching, how glorious it would be.

But it is not all. There is another side.

In his name millions and millions of men and women have been imprisoned, tortured and killed. In his name millions and millions have been enslaved. In his name the thinkers, the investigators, have been branded as criminals, and his followers have shed the blood of the wisest and best.

In his name the progress of many nations was stayed for a thousand years. In his gospel was found the dogma of eternal pain, and his words added an infinite horror to death. His gospel filled the world with hatred and revenge; made intellectual honesty a crime; made happiness here the road to hell, denounced love as base and bestial, canonized credulity, crowned bigotry and destroyed ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

I am a sleeper, a spy, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not a misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, though some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

He wondered if there were other places in the universe where the rules of the living did not require feeding on each other - where wonder could be discovered without horror and learning the truth did not entail losing one's faith. ~ David Rhodes

Know your number. If you don't know it you might forget who you are. ~ Diane Samuels