Horror Stories Quotes

With horror stories in general, I try and take Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock's advice and convey to the audience: Everyone has something to feel guilty about. ~ Chris Mentillo

Some people have got advice, some people have got horror stories. I like people that look you in the eye with a glow and say "It's gonna be cool." ~ Russell Crowe

An important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I don't have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage. ~ Jenny Slate

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

So it is that supernatural horror is the product of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not the pastime of even our closest relations in the wholly natural world: we gained it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are. Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, we immediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this gift. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Upon returning home, she immediately donned the long, silky gloves and was immediately transported to a time of her youth, a time no one in town could ever recall, for it never occurred to anyone who knew her that she had ever been young. ~ Brooke Warra

Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

back in the middle ages
they burned unruly women at the stake
and out of the ashes of their bones and flesh
rose the Enlightenment and Reason fresh
and the white men declared
there's no such thing as witches
they're just crazy psycho-bitches
but we certainly can't let them run free
lock 'em up and throw away the key
yeah they said: lock 'em up and throw away the key

cause there's nothing scarier than a woman mad and/or
aware of her own magic
tragic how much violence is done
in the name of science
to ensure our silence

in Victorian times they located suffering in our uterus
in the blood in the soft internal organs
took our pain our righteous rage
they called it 'hysteria'
and then Dr. Freud ignored women's horror stories
herstories of abuse and rape and
took a justified hatred of the penis and called it
envy (he sold more books that way) ~ Leah Harris

No wonder that the ghost and goblin stories had a new zest. No wonder that the blood of the more timid grew chill and curdled, that their flesh crept, and their hearts beat irregularly, and the girls peeped fearfully over their shoulders, and huddled close together like frightened sheep, and half-fancied they beheld some impish and malignant face gibbering at them from the darkling corners of the old room. By degrees my high spirits died out, and I felt the childish tremors, long latent, long forgotten, coming over me. I followed each story with painful interest; I did not ask myself if I believed the dismal tales. I listened and fear grew upon me - the blind, irrational fear of our nursery days. ("Horror: A True Tale") ~ John Berwick Harwood

In the media, an avalanche of negative images of an Africa quickly sinking into anarchy so soon after independence overwhelmed him. Horror stories were broadcast with glee and broke the resolve of so many black activists. ~ Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

I think all the characters in 'American Horror Story,' which is why I love it, are looking for some sense of meaning, and also it's their form of happiness. ~ Denis O'Hare

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. 'You are under military law,' ran the forceful reminder, 'and you are still subject to punishment. Don't speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don't speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.'
One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled 'Notes for Those Going on Leave.' Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. 'You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the ~ Antony Beevor

Numbers and maps tell horror stories, but the stories of deepest horror are perhaps those for which there are no numbers, no maps, no possible accountability, no words ever written or spoken. ~ Valeria Luiselli

I am coming to the end of acting. I have a list: another stage production, maybe one or two more movies, one more season of American Horror Story ... and then that is it for me. Because I think that's enough. I want to go out with a bang ... or should I say, a scare? ~ Jessica Lange

The doctrine of hell does not stand alone as a kind of ancient Christian horror story. Rather, hell is inseparable from three other interrelated biblical truths: human sin, God's holiness, and the cross of Christ. ~ Douglas Groothuis

People who are upset about something ruminate on it whenever they get a chance; they are constantly drawn back to their own unhappy tale as if it were a horror story left open on a table. ~ Emile Chartier

Well it's been about 100 years and every attempt at a comics writers' union has failed miserably. There is, sadly, a long history of short-term thinking and self-destructive behavior among my fellow comic book creators. No matter how many horror stories they have heard they won't even go so far as to hire themselves a lawyer when they need it. It breaks my heart. I am a very proud union member of the Writers Guild. And I can't imagine my fellow comic creators being able to pull something like this together. ~ Brian Michael Bendis

Great horror stories of books and movies have seemingly come from some aspect of real-life events, and human behavior. This is evident as far back as Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Psycho. The movie was based on a serial killer named, Ed Gein in Wisconsin. ~ Chris Mentillo

The table is silent again while we mull that over. Then Sophie reminds us that she dated a gay guy for two years.

"Dating sucks," I conclude.

"I got kicked out a guy's apartment once," Everly offers as her contribution to dating horror stories.

"You broke into his apartment, Everly. You stole his key and broke in. You're his dating horror story, not the other way around," I remind her while Sophie and Sandra laugh.

"Minor detail, Chloe. ~ Jana Aston

... 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

One of the problems, hanging out with me, is that I can turn any topic into a toxic horror story. I've lost two girlfriends and a job by reading an ingredients label out loud, with annotations, at the wrong time. ~ Neal Stephenson

She really needed to stop reading romantic suspense because now horror stories from authors like Shiloh Walker were on her mind and a little too vivid for what she needed at the moment. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories. ~ Vernor Vinge

Telling scary stories is something people have done for thousands of years, for most of us like being scared in that way. Since there isn't any danger, we think it is fun. ~ Alvin Schwartz

Bad horror stories concern themselves with six ways to kill a vampire, and graphic accounts of how the rats ate Billy's genitalia. Good horror stories are about larger things. About hope and despair. About love and hatred, lust and jealousy. About friendship and adolescence and sexuality and rage, loneliness and alienation and psychosis, courage and cowardice, the human mind and body and spirit under stress and in agony, the human heart in unending conflict with itself. Good horror stories make us look at our reflections in dark distorting mirrors, where we glimpse things that disturb us, things that we did not really want to look at. Horror looks into the shadows of the human soul, at the fears and rages that live within us all.
But darkness is meaningless without light, and horror is pointless without beauty. The best horror stories are stories first and horror second, and however much they scare us, they do more than that as well. They have room in them for laughter as well as screams, for triumph and tenderness as well as tragedy. They concern themselves not simply with fear, but with life in all its infinite variety, with love and death and birth and hope and lust and transcendence, with the whole range of experiences and emotions that make up the human condition. Their characters are people, people who linger in our imagination, people like those around us, people who do not exist solely to be the objects of violent slaughter in chapter four. The best horror stori ~ George R.R. Martin

Carl constantly told horror stories of cursing and beatings from his father and the twenty-four-hour blackout screaming of his alcoholic, pill-popping mother. He used his trauma like a caution sign for what he could do if I didn't silence my backtalk. ~ Maggie Young

While horror may make us squirm or quake, it will not make us cry at the pity of things. The vampire may symbolize our horror of both life and death, but none of us has ever been uprooted by a symbol. The zombie may conceptualize our sickness of the flesh and its appetites, but no one has ever been sickened to death by a concept. ~ Thomas Ligotti

There's always been a need for horror fiction, though
ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature
and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That's one big horror story. And it's the most popular book on the planet. ~ Bentley Little

Many great horror stories are period pieces and English actors have a facility for historic characters. ~ Robert Englund

Horror stories? Absolutely. To share? Not on your life. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners ... I wrote and still there were more ... No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever. ~ Grant Morrison

When I first met Alan Parker, who directed 'Angel Heart,' he'd heard so many horror stories about me that he was literally scared to death of me. Right away, he sat me down and said, 'I'm very scared of you. I've heard you're a very bad boy.' ~ Mickey Rourke

I received a phone call; my agent got a phone call from Ryan Murphy saying he wanted to talk to me ... And he basically outlined 'American Horror Story' for me and said that there's a character named Larry the Burn Guy, and I'd like you to play it. ~ Denis O'Hare

I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time. ~ Stephen King

When I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. But I never let them get in the way of the monsters. ~ China Mieville

I remember the horror story that I told myself over and over again. I'm totally alone in my body. I'm totally alone in my head and nobody will ever see through my eyes. I'm just completely alone. ~ Sarah Silverman

I know what I miss as a cinemagoer is that balance of films that actually scare me, they're so few and far between. I loved ghost stories, I love horror stories, I love all of that stuff, but I really yearn for something to actually frighten me. ~ Jane Goldman

To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding.
To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of art. Theater, fiction, horror stories, love stories. This is what art does. Good or bad, it imagines the insides, the heart of the other, whether that heart is full of light or trapped in darkness. ~ Amanda Palmer

People who have passion for horror stories, their appreciation/my appreciation is looking at it as opera. ~ Bryan Fuller

As she walked, the horror stories she'd heard from Felix and the others became real. This is what their underground efforts were fighting against. These camps, these guards, were reality to thousands of people ... Reality to the person who had just made the trip up the chimney. If they did not stop this madness, it would be the end of them all. ~ Tricia Goyer

A lot of times you'll hear horror stories about actors being incredibly selfish and only wanting themselves to shine, but for me, it's not about just one person. It's about the whole team. That's the way I look at acting. That's the way I look at everything I do. ~ Mekhi Phifer

At least the girls in stories were alive before they died. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The People from the horror stories are out there. ~ Deyth Banger

My family was always very supportive. Whether you're an actor or not, everybody hears the horror stories of people going to L.A. and trying to be an actor, and their dreams are crushed, and they end up working for the IRS. So they were always protective to the point that they wanted me to have a backup plan, which is understandable, but there was always something inside of me that knew: backup plan, schmackup plan. ~ Zachary Levi

You hear horror stories about scary mothers who just want their kids to be famous. I could be waitressing in a restaurant, and my mum would be happy as long as I was happy. ~ Maisie Williams

Many of my short stories (all unpublished) were horror, and the novel I'd just finished was horror, too. ~ George Stephen

I know you hear horror stories about child actors, but I think in my family when I did start acting it was never a big deal. ~ Ashley Johnson

You hear a lot of horror stories about proposing and things going horribly wrong - it went really, really well and I was really pleased when she said yes. ~ Prince William

Where evil walks, hell follows. ~ Asa Swift

I believe myself to be good, he thought, and so I can afford to titillate myself by considering evil, like a child frightening himself with horror stories. I am not a bad man. But I am not a wise one, either, nor understanding. And yet, if I lose this rumpled and comfortable skin that I wear, how will I ever find anything to replace it? I wish I were younger and could grow skin easily. ~ Peter S. Beagle

I feel tired, but in general, I do love being pregnant and always feel pretty good. I'm lucky. I always hear, like, horror stories. ~ Kourtney Kardashian

Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change. Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible. And he created a corporation crammed with A players. ~ Walter Isaacson

When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn't have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft's works and what I learned about his myth as the "recluse of Providence" that made me think, "That's for me!" I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I'm not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don't know what would have become of me if I hadn't discovered Lovecraft. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Horror is a reaction; it's not a genre. Somebody's life would have to be in danger for it [story] to be a horror story. ~ John Carpenter

Horror stories have always worked on film. It's where they work. That's where vampires and ghosts and UFOs are real. They're not particularly real in life, but they're real on the screen. It's the communal aspect of movie-watching. ~ John Carpenter

Subtle horror is where you rarely see the blood and gore. The violent people are called splatter-punks, who prefer graphic, unrelenting, violent, fast-paced horror. I prefer horror stories with mysterious elements that are chock-full of suspense. ~ Richard Chizmar

A cowboy, a lawyer, and a mechanic watched Queen of the Damned," I murmured.
Warren - who had once, a long time ago, been a cowboy - snickered and wiggled his bare feet. "It could be the beginning of either a bad joke or a horror story."
"No," said Kyle, the lawyer, whose head was propped up on my thigh. "If you want a horror story, you have to start out with a werewolf, his gorgeous lover, and a walker. ~ Patricia Briggs

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils. ~ Stephen King

In supernatural horror stories, however, magical thinking is a completely different matter. Those characters contending with what seems to be the work of magic will deny till the very last moment that anything magical is going on. They will invoke reason and evidence and eek out corroborations for the cause of their problems. But readers of these stories are rarely, if ever, on the side of these characters. They desperately want to believe that there is indeed something magical going on and they are primed to accept it whenever it occurs. Some readers especially enjoy a story with bad magic, as it assures them that magic is confined to fiction and will not leak into their real lives. This is the most perverse form of magical thinking and the one least likely to be recognized as such. ~ Thomas Ligotti

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

While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story. ~ Hank Stuever

There are a lot of people in the field [ of horror stories] that I do read. There is a lot of stuff that is written in this field, though, that is not very good. You just have to look for the good stuff. ~ Stephen King

There will be growing pains along the way - and more horror stories, no doubt - but the sharing economy is here to stay. ~ Glenn Carter

Edward had always thought that he belonged to the world of horror stories. Of course, I'd known he was dead wrong. It was obvious that he belonged here, in a fairytale, and now I was in the story with him. ~ Stephenie Meyer

High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I'd heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script. ~ Neill Blomkamp

The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares. ~ Mark Gatiss

Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets? ~ Cornelia Funke

It's cool to see everybody come together and do their own thing, but there's never been any drama. I never saw any on the X-Men set, and I never saw any on the Horror Story set. ~ Evan Peters

Like us, many students had spent their years in college thinking they'd get that well-paying, planet-saving job, even if they'd heard horror stories from recent underemployed grads. Those jobs, of course, no longer exist (if they ever did). By 2009, 17.4 million college graduates had jobs that didn't even require a degree. There are 365,000 cashiers and 318,000 waiters and waitresses in America who have bachelor's degrees, as do one-fifth of those working in the retail industry. More than 100,000 college graduates are janitors and 18,000 push carts. (There are 5,057 janitors in the United States who have doctorates and professional degrees!) ~ Ken Ilgunas

When someone close to you is dying, you can begin to feel wary of their everyday belongings. You've heard horror stories about sorting through 'their things' in the weeks afterwards. You look with mounting unease at your mother's dressing gown, her slippers, her purse hanging, uncharacteristically unemployed, on the bathroom hook... ~ Laurence Scott

I don't really get philosophical, but I believe that nice people are strong and usually in my horror stories, I don't like to write about the old standard where some rotten guy gets chased by a mean spirit that gets him in the end.I'd rather write about nice people that are menaced from outside by some sort of evil power and who sort of slug it out. ~ Stephen King

When I had dyslexia, they didn't diagnose it as that. It was frustrating and embarrassing. I could tell you a lot of horror stories about what you feel like on the inside. ~ Nolan Ryan

I was a struggling single mom when my novel, The Forlorned, became a motion picture. I thought my life had turned around for the better until a convicted child molester sued me for trademark infringement over the word FORLORNED. Finally, after three long years of legal proceedings, the US Supreme Court sided with me. Always stand up and fight for what is right. Never give in - never give up! ~ Angela J. Townsend

My three obsessions are mental illness, horror and religion. ~ Victor LaValle

Hollywood is all made up, anyway. Especially the stories and angles that people want to pin on you. ~ Nick Nolte

Some girls are sweeter ... Others have a tinge of bitterness ... It is as if I can smell their souls. Their experiences and relationships are painted in warm, sour crimson. ~ Katlyn Charlesworth

These heads sheltered by umbrellas
be they of Zeb-un-Nisa, or Catherine
of Cleopatra or Fenichka
live with their own stories ~ Suman Pokhrel

This daemon loves men whose marriage beds have grown cold, so she can set them ablaze. ~ Solange Nicole

Everywhere I go - from villages outside Kandy, Sri Lanka, to community centers in Amman, Jordan, to offices at the State Department in Washington, D.C. - I find people with a similar story. When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together. ~ Eboo Patel

Julio's Day is a story of one man's life, but it's a great more than that as well. It's the story of the life of a century, also told as if a day. Beginning with Julio's birth in 1900 and ending with his death in 2000, the graphic novel touches on most of the major events that shaped the 20th century. ~ Brian Evenson

Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn't trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he'd been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
"Stories aren't real," he told me shortly. "They don't feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding 'family' in the nearest gang."
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. "Write down the names of some books," she said. "Maybe we'll read them."
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young live ~ Terri Windling

If I love the character and if I love the story, and the character requires me to be shirtless, or if it requires me to lose 30 pounds, I'm ready to do it. ~ Taylor Lautner

I'm sure fame is yet to come; however, it's not my ultimate goal. I really just want to be able to tell stories, and create, and do it for a living. ~ Jessica Barth

I didn't want to write unless I could say, and think for myself. I looked to peers that I not only respected but those that supported that. I finished becoming who I am today by sticking up for myself as a voice, but that is in part thanks to the huge role the good guys I chose to work with played in my professional development. Some really terrific human beings who loved horror welcomed me with open arms. ~ Karen Walton

A typical National World Weekly would tell the world how Jesus' face was seen on a Big Mac bun bought by someone from Des Moines, with an artist's impression of the bun; how Elvis Presley was recently sighted working in a Burger Lord in Des Moines; how listening to Elvis records cured a Des Moines housewife's cancer; how the spate of werewolves infesting the Midwest are the offspring of noble pioneer women raped by Bigfoot; and that Elvis was taken by Space Aliens in 1976 because he was too good for this world. Remarkably, one of these stories is indeed true. ~ Neil Gaiman

Before they are able to enter a new story, most people - and probably most societies as well - must first navigate the passage out of the old. In between the old and the new there is an empty space. It is a time when the lessons and learnings of the old story are integrated. Only when that work has been done is the old story really complete. Then, there is nothing, the pregnant emptiness from which all being arises. Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit. ~ Charles Eisenstein

Every crack in the sidewalk has a story to tell. ~ Marty Rubin

There was one woman who had a giant sign and on it, it just said, 'America Is Better Than Abortion.' I think she meant that America was too good a place for the horror of abortion. But instead, it sounded like she had weighed both - the American spirit and getting an abortion and decided that American spirit better. I think it is a bad idea to have grammatically ambiguous protest signs. ~ Eugene Mirman

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective. ~ J.J. Abrams

When you are in the present moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. ~ Eckhart Tolle

We love those beautiful, Latin American stories where there is an element that's more mysterious and wonderful. I think as a child a lot of us love the idea of the star and more of the supernatural elements. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

Jane, last night was" - he raked a hand through his hair - "nice."
Her expression could only be described as crestfallen.
"No,"he hurried to say. "Don't look like that! I didn't mean 'nice.' In fact, it wasn't nice at all."
Her brows lowered. "No?"
"No.I mean, yes! Yes, it was nice, but it was also very, very - " He tried with all of his might to grasp a word that would encompass that heart - pounding exertion that even now was making his balls hum,but to his horror, he heard himself say once again," - nice. But really, really, really nice. ~ Karen Hawkins

This was exactly what the girl had most dreaded all her life and had scrupulously avoided until now: lovemaking without emotion or love. She knew that she had crossed the forbidden boundary, but she proceeded across it without objections and as a full participant; only somewhere, far off in a corner of her consciousness, did she feel horror at the thought that she had never known such pleasure, never so much pleasure as at this moment
beyond that boundary. ~ Milan Kundera

She had lost herself somewhere along the frontier between her inventions, her stories, her fantasies and her true self. The boundaries had become effaced, the tracks lost, she had walked into pure chaos, and not a chaos which carried her like the galloping of romantic riders in operas and legends, but which suddenly revealed the stage props: a papier-mâché horse. ~ Anais Nin

Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that. ~ Lyn Nofziger

The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself, were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennessee Williams play, with their bursting unimportant, but spell-bindingly mad speeches. ~ Lorrie Moore

Unlike the rest he had seen of the bungalow, the hall beyond the door was dark. He could see the glimmer of three doors and several framed photographs lined up along the walls. The sound of flies was louder, though they didn't seem to be in the hall itself. Now that he was closer they sounded even more like someone groaning feebly, and the rotten smell was stronger too. ~ Ramsey Campbell

Then there were her childhood book: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, What Katy did next, Pollyanna - stories about girls who were good. All Pollyanna had ever done wrong was ruin her parasol. Beth in Little Women was so perfect she was only fit for heaven. Why were girls in novels exemplary, almost saintly? Grace preferred adventure stories, histories and romances about what to do if you were damned and female, tales about women who were kind, likeable and believable, who escaped unpunished. No thin Quakers with lace caps. No beatific consumptives coughing delicately. No unloved, eternally jolly orphans. Grace craved books about girls like herself: good women, normal women in a world bigger and more powerful than themselves. ~ Wendy Jones

While the stories are fiction, the journey is real. ~ C.J. Peterson