Horror Authors Quotes

Most people think of Stephen King as a horror author, but his best work usually comes with a side order of nostalgic Americana. ~ Stewart Stafford

Sulphurous wind gusted in his wake; the dust of the street swirled and the folds of his black coat flapped against his thin body. ~ A.F. Stewart

I tell everyone who asks me about writing ... almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough! ~ Brooklyn Hudson

Some things you cannot see or explain, but they are there, lurking.
Some things dwell in the dark: waiting ... watching ... haunting.
Sometimes evil takes on many forms, many faces.
And silence is the last thing you hear, when it's already too late.
THE SILENCE ~ Barry Brickey

As the helpless vampire watched the transformation, it started screaming. It was still screaming when his rows of razor sharp teeth sank into its throat. ~ Alan Kinross

Some Murders Shouldn't Be Investigated. ~ Thomas Amo

I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills from my lips in frothy discomposure. It splatters the pavement like a spray of blood. ~ Rebecca Clare Smith

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things.
Until it was no more.
Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone.
The birth of a city ... It had become the death of a world. ~ Charles Beaumont

The two of them had discovered it was all right to open the closets ... as long as you didn't poke too far back in them. Because things might still be lurking there, ready to bite. ~ Stephen King

I've been told by a few people at conferences I have a rather academic approach to the subject matter that makes it easy for people to ask questions. I think some genre writers feel the need to "sell" or defend what they do, and so when a door opens to discuss their genre, regardless of what that genre is, they tend to get almost pushy. I'm comfortable with what I write. It is part of who I am. I don't really need to sell it. But if I'm asked, I'll explain it. ~ Julie Ann Dawson

As soon as Todd drove off the motorway it vanished from the mirror, and so did the sun across the moor. ~ Ramsey Campbell

The saga of semen stained sheets continues. ~ Kristy Berridge

No one will ever write a horror novel as scary as reading about my symptoms on WebMD. ~ John Raptor

The image is an example of how horror writers view our world. A view that is far from the norm. Their writing always seeking that visceral fear in us all. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel. And it's going to freak you out. If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein. You have been warned. ~ Blake Crouch

Did I never tell you Sassicaia makes me horny? ~ Steve Emmett

In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die - die sweetly die - into mine. ~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Horror is the only genre where you don't have to explain everything. Things happen just because and that alone makes it scary. ~ R.A. Horn

Everything is About To Change. ~ Chris Mentillo

My mistake was that I didn't kill you. ~ Kayla Krantz

We stopped looking in the shadows, when we realised that WE were the monsters that we are afraid of. I want to take these monsters, give them a voice and put them back under our beds, in our closets and in the shadows, back where we are most afraid of them. ~ Rob Shepherd

No amount of therapy can replace the joy of revenge writing. ~ Mylo Carbia

Writing is a lonely act. When two writers come together to write a horror story it can be crazy. You can't step on a mine and hope it doesn't explode. ~ Ben Oliveira

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

SHIT, WAS THAT A BIT OF EYEBALL STUCK IN MY CLEAVAGE? ~ Kristy Berridge

Wolves and those who see them are shot on sight. ~ Peter Straub

Life is a journey, not a destination. (Unk) ~ G. Bernard Ray

Sometimes good people do bad things. ~ Andrew Gilmore

Where evil walks, hell follows. ~ Asa Swift

The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels. ~ Mylo Carbia

Even the contemporary horror authors who have seriously influenced me are a disparate bunch. ~ George Stephen

Stephen King fans are the enlightened ones. Their opinion of your work could never be bad. Mr. King has shown them, in so many ways what to look for. Good or bad, accept their counsel and build on it. It's not about you. It's about the story. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

Child, that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Oh, the fruit is good, but they loath it ever after. ~ C.S. Lewis

Writing is architectural. Letters become words, and words become sentences, and sentences become paragraphs, and paragraphs become chapters and chapters become books. ~ Veronica Chambers

He looked with horror round the room: nobody could say he hadn't done right to get away from this, to commit any crime ... When the man opened his mouth he heard his father speaking, that figure in the corner was his mother: he bargained for his sister and felt no desire ... He turned to Rose, 'I'm off,' and felt the faintest tinge of pity for goodness which couldn't murder to escape. ~ Graham Greene

Have you seen your sin in light of the Law of God? Do you understand in your heart of hearts that if every secret sin is manifest on the Day of Wrath and if justice had its way, you would fall like lightning into hell? Have you fallen prostrate in the blood-soaked earth at the foot of the cross? Have you pictured Jesus Christ crucified? Have you seen the precious blood pouring from His hands and His feet, and cried, "For me He dies"? If you have, horror mingled with unspeakable gratitude will drive you to your knees, and you will whisper, "Oh, God, because You did that for me, I will do anything for You!" This zeal for God will produce in you a zeal for the lost. Remember that whispered prayer of surrender the next time you fear hollers at you as you hand someone a tract. ~ Ray Comfort

Nor did these society people add to Elstir's work in their mind's eye that temporal perspective which enabled them to like, or at least to look without discomfort at, Chardin's painting. And yet the older among them might have reminded themselves that in the course of their lives they had gradually seen, as the years bore them away from it, the unbridgeable gulf between what they considered a masterpiece by Ingres and what they had supposed must forever remain a "horror" (Manet's Olympia, for example) shrink until the two canvases seemed like twins. But we never learn, because we lack the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general, and imagine ourselves always to be faced with an experience which has no precedents in the past. ~ Marcel Proust

The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible. ~ Edward O. Wilson

I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage. ~ Dan Chaon

Don't worry about paying me. Stay alive, child. You must save yourself. And, whatever you do, don't forget who you are ~ Catrina Burgess

His eyes met hers, cold and deadly, and the dagger's edge pressed against her skin. Then his expression shifted into horror. He lowered the dagger and stepped back. "Ileni. That was not smart."
"I know. I'm sorry ... " And this time, she didn't even try to stop the tears. ~ Leah Cypess

The fact that 'A Dirty Job' has comedy and supernatural horror in it, that both are woven in and out of it with a whimsical tone, despite the fact that it's about death, makes it hard to characterize with standard genre labels - but I have no problem with that. I'd call it a funny story about death, and leave it at that. ~ Christopher Moore

I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape. ~ Lorene Cary

Meeting writers is usually disappointing, at best. Writers who write sexy thrillers aren't necessarily sexy or thrilling in person. Children's book writers might look more like accountants, or axe murderers for that matter. Horror writers are very rarely scary looking, although they are frequently good cooks. ~ Kelly Link

People who make snide comments to authors like "anyone can write a book" or "well, you did it, so obviously I can/it can't be that hard" or poke at a book because it's "romance" or "genre fiction" and act like that somehow makes it substandard because they don't read it ... well, ok, go ahead. Write a bestseller. Don't forget to go through the correct edit process. We'll wait. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

No sport, watching horror movie with friends in bright room.
Try that alone at night without light with mirror above screen! ~ Toba Beta

Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether it be from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind may linger on through life ~ James De Mille

I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it. ~ George Grosz

The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they've written, they write some more. ~ Jasper Fforde

My environmentalism reared its head around the age of ten when I inexplicably become obsessed with littering. For some reason I considered it my personal responsibility to pick up litter wherever I found it and yell at anyone I saw contributing to the problem (much to the horror of my mother). I was a ten-year-old on a mission to clean up the streets! But it was years later when I became a mother myself that concern for my kids' future really ignited my passion and set me on my course. Once I started reading and educating myself, there was no turning back. ~ Laurie David

And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity. ~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge

Once the frontiers of horror have been crossed, one will pass from form to form beyond the human and from metamorphosis to metamorphosis to accomplish, in the anguish of an impossible return, the most terrible journey to the depths of darkness. ~ Georges Limbour

At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear ...
... 'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

We're authors, too," Donegan said, "and we've been trying to get into the picture-book market. We have this idea for a Where's Wally type thing, except in ours, you'd have to find the one living person hiding in among all the dismembered corpses while the chainsaw-wielding killer hunts him down. You know, for kids."
"We're going to call is Save the Survivor," Gracious said. ~ Derek Landy

Few experiences in life quite match the feelings of horror, fear, helplessness, and grief that families experience when someone they love becomes addicted to alcohol or other drugs. They watch in dismay as the addict becomes alienated from the family and undergoes profound changes. Activities that once brought the addict pleasure are abandoned, old friends are pushed away, and the addict withdraws into a world that is inaccesible to anyone who tries to help. ~ Beverly Conyers

Sometimes when I prepare to write, I feel the same sensation wash over me as if my toes were curling over the brink of a high cliff, my gaze peering downward into a dark pond, and I anxiously wonder, will the water prove deep enough? Will my words be satisfactory? ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.
Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, - the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I haven't done lots of horror. ~ Christopher Lee

Whoever authors your story authorizes your actions. ~ Sam Keen

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living. ~ Erica Jong

I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective. ~ Mallory Ortberg

That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment ... the most unimaginable horror. ~ James Nesbitt

I was so furious, you see, that all around me were things that could move and bend and grow and reproduce and my son - my vital, charismatic, beautiful boy - was just this thing. Immobile, wilted, bloodied, suffering. Their beauty seemed like an obscenity. I screamed and I screamed and I swore - words I didn't know I knew - until Steven came out and stood, his hand resting on my shoulder, waiting until he could be sure that I would be silent again. He didn't understnad, you see. He hadn't worked it out yet. That Will would try again. That our lives would be spent in a state of constant vigilance, waiting for the next time, waiting to see what horror he could inflict upon himself. We would have to see the world through his eyes - the potential poisons, the sharp objects, the inventiveness with which he could finish the job that damned motorcyclist had started. Our lives had to shrink to fit around the potential for that one act. And he had the advantage - he had nothing else to think about, you see ? Two weeks later, I told Will, "Yes". Of course I did. What else could I have done ? ~ Jojo Moyes

You cannot control what you love
you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead. ~ Graham Greene

The man she wanted existed only in the romantic novels she was reading. She had met him. But he would never meet her. ~ Mary Papas

My parents warned me about horror movies
Blood and guts and Stephen King.
They told me to stop reading such disturbing stories
Stop playing such cutthroat games
But when I swapped my novels for newspapers
Changed the channel from AMC to CNN
My thoughts only grew darker
The world only seemed icier
AND I WISHED I HAD STUCK TO FICTION. ~ Holly Riordan

... my life has been a remarkable one. Maybe one day someone will write a book about me ... "
"I've never much cared for horror stories. ~ Anthony Horowitz

The modern horror audience is wise to our tricks this lets it in on the gag. ~ Robert Englund

Archaeology is a deeply conservative discipline and I have found that archaeologists, no matter where they are working, have a horror of questioning anything their predecessors and peers have already announced to be true. They run a very real risk of jeopardizing their careers if they do. In consequence they focus--perhaps to a large extent subconsciously--on evidence and arguments that don't upset the applecart. There might be room for some tinkering around the edges, some refinement of orthodox ideas, but God forbid that anything should be discovered that might seriously undermine the established paradigm. ~ Graham Hancock

There was nothing physical she could do to stop Mario from carrying out whatever he wished. She shivered at the thought of what that sleazy, other world leftover might do should she launch an attack on him. ~ G.G. Collins

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile. ~ George Bernard Shaw

As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Fred Ruskin barreled through the rain down Buchanan Street in his battered Pacer, the jar his dead wife had directed him to retrieve from his nephew's coffin bouncing in the seat beside him. ~ Joe DeRouen

No one dreamed them up. No one needed to. The vampire clawing at the window, the werewolf prowling the moor, the hags at the crossroads – they lurked here already. Some nightmares are ancient, as old as civilization. Some are older still. ~ Robert Dunbar VORTEX

Writers are always selling somebody out. ~ Joan Didion

When famous singer is following your account, When profesional photographers, CEOs, authors, and attorneys, added you into their circle, When a popular model added you as their friend, When a famous Korean actor asked you for adding him into your circle...... You're feeling wow and amazed, but the truth is you need your real friends ~ Glad Munaiseche

Yes' Simon nodded. 'This would suggest that these patterns grow inside the batteries until a critical point is reached, when the shapes develop no further, and the phone ceases to function. ~ A. Ashley Straker

But the thing that ... that I touched ... " I cried. "It was furry! It-" I stopped short, taken with a shudder. "I know," said Herrick. ~ Margery Williams

My total friendlessness, my horror of pushing, and inability to put myself forward unless led, cherished and supported – all this has sunk me in a state of loneliness no other human being, ever before, I believe endured – except Robinson Crusoe . . ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Though not invariably the worst choice, war is always an obscene horror. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Nightmares did come true. Because, after her second night of major loving with the man of her dreams, the absolute last person she ever wanted to see was her mother. Yet there she was, her small, hefty frame trundling up the stairs to Maira's front door.
She was so frozen with horror, she couldn't move until she heard the doorbell ring.
Don't answer it. Maybe she'll go away.
Well, that was just stupid. ~ Alisha Rai