Granta 117 Horror Diem Perdidi Quotes

She remembers her name. She remembers the name of the president. She remembers the name of the president's dog. She remembers what city she lives in. And on which street. And in which house. The one with the big olive tree where the road takes a turn. She remembers what year it is. She remembers the season. She remembers the day on which you were born. She remembers the daughter who was born before you – She had your father's nose, that was the first thing I noticed about her – but she does not remember that daughter's name. She remembers the name of the man she did not marry – Frank – and she keeps his letters in a drawer by her bed. She remembers that you once had a husband, but she refuses to remember your ex-husband's name. That man, she calls him.

She does not remember how she got the bruises on her arms or going for a walk with you earlier this morning. She does not remember bending over, during that walk, and plucking a flower from a neighbour's front yard and slipping it into her hair. Maybe your father will kiss me now. She does not remember what she ate for dinner last night, or when she last took her medicine. She does not remember to drink enough water. She does not remember to comb her hair.

She remembers the rows of dried persimmons that once hung from the eaves of her mother's house in Berkeley. They were the most beautiful shade of orange. She remembers that your father loves peaches. She remembers that every Sunday morning, at ten, he ta ~ Julie Otsuka

Carpe diem: Enjoying the "instants" as they emerge. When living is too comfy or glitzy, it may not be easy to appreciate the humblest things in life. Being happy with the small gifts we receive can be a bliss, but we can, even more, expand it through voluntary action and exalting Voltaire's words, "today, I have decided to be happy." (« Is that all there is?") ~ Erik Pevernagie

I am nothing--nothing--nothing. She was clinging to that, she found, as to a sort of anchor, because it kept her from having to face the terrible possibility that God Himself was not, and the realization of God's nothingness would be the final horror that could not be borne. Yet as time passed she knew that that possibility, too, must be faced. She must let go of the very last thing left her, the knowledge of her own nothingness, and face it. And she let go, and looked around for God and did not find Him; and then there was nothing, except the dark night.
But there was the dark night. Very slowly she became conscious of it, and then she found that she was hugging it to her, wrapping herself in it as though it were a cloak to hide her in this hour of her humiliation. For a long while the night was all that she had, and then suddenly, like a sword stabbing the darkness, came a trill of music. It was a bird welcoming the dawn. That, too, was added. She drew back one of the curtains of her bed and saw a patch of grey light where the window was. That also. During the hours of the night she had been completely stripped, and now one by one a few things were being handed to her for the clothing of her naked, shivering, humiliated soul. For a few things one must have to make one decent if one was to step forth again upon the highway. For that, obviously, impossible though the task seemed to her at this moment, was what she had to do as soon as the full day came, because there was ~ Elizabeth Goudge

What's inspiring me the most [is] injustice. My own growth as a member of the human race, in terms of the veils being lifted, seeing more of the beauty and also the horror. A sense of my own purpose in this life. Love ... ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

"Easy, female," Cade soothed as he crept closer to where Holly huddled naked in a corner.
...
When he began unbuttoning his shirt to cover her, she gave a cry, and bloody claws swiped out at him. Then she stared in horror at her fingertips.
...
When he removed his shirt, she bared her small fangs and hissed, then looked aghast at her reaction.
"There, now, a good hiss never hurt anyone. ~ Kresley Cole

She was fast approaching thirty, and with that impending birthday the way she thought of her own life was beginning to change. When she was twenty, she thought of people in their thirties as, well, old: after all, they had lived as long as she had and half as long again, and so they must have been tired, with the beginnings of aches in their bones and the first intimations of their own mortality.

But the peculiar horror of growing older was not what she expected. In fact, she felt the same age as she had eight years ago, and twenty-eight years of life had managed to compress themselves into a life-span that once comfortably held twenty. It wasn't that she was getting older, but that the years were getting shorter, and were therefore more precious. You had to use them sparingly. ~ Dexter Palmer

Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

Jane woke, stretched, and decided to kill herself. If she hadn't found a reason to live by the end of the day she would jump from the rig. It felt good to have a plan. ~ Adam Baker

Times goes by your choice, if you make your days wonderful the days will go fast... and interesting and memorable.... If you do it in boring way they will go like watching a film which doesn't have something to make you get interested without games, crimes, horror, thriller, romance and every single other genre which you think without it the film is awful... but not only genre, but genres! ~ Deyth Banger

...Don't be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause; perhaps Mrs. Dudley has not yet had her own mid morning snack, and she is perfectly capable of a filet de Luke á la meuniére, or perhaps dieppoise, depending upon her mood; if I do not return" -and he shook his finger warningly under the doctor's nose- "I entreat you to regard your lunch with the gravest suspicion." Bowing extravagantly, as befitted one off to slay a giant, he closed the door behind him. ~ Shirley Jackson

This is what you left, I thought. The vindication of the choice you made to leave that night. Vindication and horror. Sometimes being right isn't all it's cracked up to be: how many times in the last few years I thought about bitter fruit, how when what you are right about is
well you can't even look at it. ~ Peter Heller

I reeled with giddiness - flames passed before my eyes.
I remembered those precipices that drew one towards them with irresistible power - wells that have had to be filled up because of persons throwing themselves into them - trees that have had to be cut down because of people hanging themselves upon them - the contagion of suicide and theft and murder, which at various times has taken possession of people's minds, by means well understood; that strange inducement, which makes people kill themselves because others kill themselves. My hair rose upon my head with horror!
("The Invisible Eye") ~ Erckmann-Chatrian

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors
we hope
of your life come from reading fiction. ~ Orson Scott Card

Thinking about such things soothed the creature as it dug at the base of a tall oak tree, deep into the ground, covering itself with dirt and leaves and moss; hiding, healing, waiting. ~ Joe DeRouen

I don't share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don't mind spiders or snakes or darkness. ~ Helen Mirren

She watched his face as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror. ~ Charles Dickens

When she first saw him, she took him for a ghost. His jet-black hair fluttered in the breeze as he walked, letting her see his eyes. They seemed haunted, lost in some way. He was tall and gaunt, starkly pale in his black clothes. He was the very picture of Anton, even sharing his world-weary eyes of deepest blue. She could hardly look away from this apparition, an echo of all the memories and dreams that had haunted her these many years. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint. ~ Robert Delaunay

We exponents of horror do much better than those Method actors. We make the unbelievable believable. More often than not, they make the believable unbelievable. ~ Vincent Price

Step, step, step, I fall and they lift me, slip-slop, slip-slop, through the watery mud. Each step is a heartbeat on my way to the grave, and the longest walk I will ever take. Plip, plip, I slip and they gather me. How strong are these savages, and how tight is their grip! Plip, plip, plip patters the rain, and I fall, and I call, and I stall for more time.

But my time has run out. ~ Louise Blackwick

No," agreed Eldon, laughing as well, "but you always looked out for me. If I was hurt, you took care of me. If I was scared, you held my hand." Eldon paused nervously: Tobias was looking directly at him and listening with a small, fond smile. "I . . . always felt safest in your arms," Eldon went on sheepishly. He dropped his eyes to the floor as he whispered, "Nothing has changed. ~ Ash Gray

Perhaps it was simple reflex, her own instinct for survival. Or perhaps it had been his
words, bringing back the horror of her mother's death. But when he reached for the
satchel, Adrianne ignored the knife and brought her foot up hard between his legs. The
knife clattered to the ground only seconds before he did.
"Bastard," she muttered as she sent the knife careening into the dark. "Now your pride's
as small as your brain and just as useless."
"Well put," Philip said as he came up behind her. ~ Nora Roberts

I repeat that there is no practical joke here, but that we are investigating a serious crime. A vague thrill ran through me as I listened to my companion's words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features. This brutal preliminary seemed to shadow forth some strange and inexplicable horror in the background. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Evil exists everywhere. Sometimes I think our limited senses are designed to protect us from awareness of its presence. We trust them to provide us with knowledge but it may be that they block out realization of horrors we cannot bear. ~ Robert Bloch

I have a horror of the word 'flesh', which has become so shopworn.Why not 'meat'whilethey're about it? What I like is skin, a young girl's skin that is pink and shows that she has a good circulation. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I used to figure that Santa was the zombie. Not like modern zombies, more like the voodoo ones. The elves resurrect this long dead saint to do their festive bidding every year because they were magically restricted to the North Pole. It's entirely possibly my mom let me watch too many horror movies. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Why can't my life be more like a porno than a horror movie, ~ Annie Bellet

How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier. ~ Allen Ginsberg

But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past.
The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing
Too present to imagine. ~ Robert Frost

Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950's. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

What happened after 9/11 - and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not - was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons ... The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it. ~ Paul Krugman

And could a man sink to such triviality, such meanness, such nastiness? Could he change so much? And is it true to life? Yes, it is all true to life. All this can happen to a man. The ardent youth of today would start back in horror if you could show him his portrait in old age. As you pass from the soft years of youth into harsh, hardening manhood, be sure you take with you on the way all the humane emotions, do not leave them on the road: you will not pick them up again afterwards! ~ Nikolai Gogol

My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it. ~ Sophie Swetchine

I've always been a horror fan! Ever since I can vastly remember, and I think it's because I was so terrified of monsters and ghosts as a kid that I had to sleep in front of my parents room until I was 12. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

I thought I told you to stop doing that," he snapped.
A thin-lipped mouth opened; the jutting chin and nose knocked together indignantly. "Do what?"
"Taking on such a hideous appearance. I've just had my breakfast."
A section of brow lifted, allowing an eyeball to roll forward with a squelching sound.The face looked
unapologetic."Sorry, mate," it said. "It's just my job."
"Your job is to destroy anyone entering my study without authority. No more, no less."
The door guard considered. "True. But I seek to preempt entry by scaring trespassers away. To my way
of thinking, deterrence is more aesthetically satisfying than punishment."
Mr. Mandrake snorted. "Trespassers apart, you'll likely frighten Ms. Piper here to death."
The face shook from side to side, a process that caused the nose to wobble alarmingly. "Not so. When
she comes alone, I moderate my features. I reserve the full horror for those I consider morally vicious."
"But you just looked that way to me!"
"The contradiction being...? ~ Jonathan Stroud

Allow me to introduce myself... I'm the Countess... ~ American Horror Story

I am talking about ultimate deceit. I am talking about unparalleled treachery. Bottomless lies. Depths that are seen that are previously unimaginable. Darkness and shattering despair that could break bones. Paranoia and horror that could stop the heart cold. All inflicted on one's self by one's self. The soul turns schizophrenic and goes hopelessly insane. ~ Henry Rollins