Horror Writer Quotes

As for my being a horror writer, I actually think horror is a very conservative genre. The horror comes when you do something wrong--when you challenge religion or society or nature--and then you must pay. I personally consider myself a radical, but I publish conservative material. That's quite a paradox. ~ John Coyne

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

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

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

If I had stayed purely a horror writer or thriller writer, I might have more of a presence in those particular genres, and I'd certainly have more individual titles to market, since it's much easier to write pure genre fiction than it is to create something different. ~ Chet Williamson

Buford, my beloved vintage 1930's Underwood Universal Champion Portable typewriter. You are both my writing partner and my best friend. This journey you and I have been on has been fun. Although in 2016 you gave me carpal tunnel. In both hands. Didn't think I knew it was you, did you? You sneaky sombitch. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

The picture to my left, that's me. My name is Stephanie M. Wytovich, and yes, I am a female horror writer. But am I? No, of course not. I mean, if you want to bring my vagina into the conversation, then yes, I guess that's technically true, but seeing that I don't write with it, I'm not sure why that would be appropriate. ~ Stephanie M. Wytovich

I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker. ~ Christopher Moore

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle. ~ Michael Chabon

They did type me as a horror writer, but I have been able to do all sorts of things within that framework. ~ Ken Kesey

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

He clasped his hands to his ears as if he would tear his very brain out!" A sample line from Shadow my psychological/horror compared to Poe! ~ C.S. Dixon

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

The supernatural, and all it represents, is profoundly abnormal, and therefore unreal. Few would argue with these conclusions. Fine. Now the highest aim of the realistic horror writer is to prove, in realistic terms, that the unreal is real. The question is: "Can this be done?" The answer is: "Of course not." One would look silly attempting such a thing. Consequently, the realistic horror writer, wielding the hollow proofs and premises of his art, must settle for merely seeming to smooth out the ultimate paradox. In order to achieve this effect, the supernatural realist must really know the normal world, and deeply take for granted its reality. (It helps if he himself is normal and real.) Only then can the unreal, the abnormal, the supernatural be smuggled in as a plain brown package marked Hope, Love, or Fortune Cookies, and postmarked: the Edge of the Unknown. ~ Thomas Ligotti

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

Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror. ~ Dean Koontz

I've always suffered from being labelled a horror writer - just because I didn't go to university, just because I still talk in my natural voice, just because I'm not as articulate as Martin Amis. ~ James Herbert

To dive in the darkness, I should dive in the truth, then in images of the world..., then facts, then in books, then listening, then in short stories... that's how I write the horror. It's very complicated. ~ Deyth Banger

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

Be glad that I'm not a horror writer, some people write about it, other make images... but third just create it??? As for me, I have create it from horror up to nightmares! ~ Deyth Banger

When Stephen King elaborated on his inspirations for his novel "Carrie" he draws from a time when he was a young man, and describes his impression when he came upon a statue of Christ on the cross, hanging there in misery, and he thought "If THAT guy ever came back, he probably wouldn't be in a saving mood." ~ Stephen King

A horror writer is one who is not only willing to look into the darkest of shadows ... but to reach into them too. ~ Thomas Scopel

Gregory writes of Armageddon as if the Devil is getting off on using him literally to write that iniquitous beast into existence, into the flesh. I believe both Gregory and Jamie Stillingsworth are being used as vessels to bring about the end of days. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

My image is who I am, but not what I write. ~ Brian M.W.

A writer who can't use his firsthand experience must turn to secondhand experience, which can lead to thirdhand clichés. ~ Christopher Bram

ARGH! There's no such thing [as writer's block]. Seriously: THERE. IS. NO. SUCH. THING. You know what there is? There's a bunch of problems, creative and otherwise, that can stop you writing. They are not block. They are important skills. ~ Nick Harkaway

In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television. ~ Mary Harron

Well it was sent to me, well because almost everything that is written in Baltimore is sent to me. And David Simon, who was a writer for the Baltimore Sun, spent one year following the homicide squad in Baltimore and he chronicled that period of time. ~ Barry Levinson

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power. ~ Orson Scott Card

I'd never watch a horror film, but after I found out I was going to be in one, I watched, like, four of them, including The Shining, I was terrified - I couldn't sleep for days. But I wanted to get myself used to things I was going to see on the set. ~ Jennifer Love Hewitt

She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry.... ~ Virginia Alison

Do you realize that a middle-class couple, one archaeologist, one dolls' expert, can't move from their house because ancient spirits are blocking them in? It's a reasonable sort of day's experience, isn't it? ~ Robert Holdstock

I've always been a Dracula/vampire aficionado, being half-Romanian myself. Dracula has always been close to my heart - in fact, I have a first edition of Bram Stoker's book. I read it over and over again as a young kid. ~ Ray Wise

You wouldn't think that people would believe that we all got so incredibly beat up - in so many interesting ways - from a bear attack. Especially not when Carmel is sporting a bite mark that is a spot-on match for wounds found at one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent history. But I never fail to be surprised by what people will believe. ~ Kendare Blake

The history of horror movies goes back a long way ... of people trying to convincingly be terrified when looking at a piece of tape on the side of the camera box. I have a whole new respect for it. ~ Josh Hamilton

It was always a false assumption that white American writers cannot write novels about race unless they're approaching it from a very oblique angle. ~ Jess Row

I thought I felt this connection between us but . . . I wanted you to like me, that's all, really like me. What you and Kay had - have - whatever, I've never had that. To my horror there are tears in my eyes. ~ Cynthia Hand

I wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker. ~ John Lennon

In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint. ~ Chinua Achebe

The stinging slap against her cheek whipped her head sideways. Her hand reflexively went to her burning face.
"I told you no," Tobe said, barely above a whisper.
Daphne had no words. He'd never so much as hinted at touching her in anger before. She now understood what stunned speechless meant. ~ Hunter Shea

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

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything. ~ John Irving

However, there is one great temptation and that is that you can forget that the aim of the writer was to reject all other worlds and to construct one of his own and that the aim of the translator is to re-embody himself into the world of the various writers. ~ Ventseslav Konstantinov

Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita). ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Before the camera, you only had secondhand takes - someone had to tell you what they saw or draw a picture of it or sing a song. Because of the camera, sometimes to our horror, we now know everything that happens in the world - things that before we were sheltered from. ~ D. A. Pennebaker

I was surprised to find myself in tears. Because these women had trusted me to help as a writer, I began to see a way of bringing together two things - writing and activism - that until then had torn me apart in everyday life. ~ Gloria Steinem

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand. ~ Henry Adams

Any writer can attest that in the luckiest, happiest state, the words are not coming from you, but through you. ~ Zoe Kazan

I don't like the new trends in horror. All this torture stuff seems really mean-spirited. People have forgotten how to laugh, and I don't see anybody who's using it as allegory. ~ George A. Romero

I went through a phase where I wanted to be a writer ... but it's not social enough. ~ Sophie Kennedy Clark

I didn't actually get along with my dad when I was growing up, so by the time I was in my 20s, I didn't think I was going to be a writer. ~ Brian Herbert

Initial euphoria would give way to shock, shock to horror, and then, as the killing dragged on with no end in sight, horror to a kind of benumbed despair. ~ Scott Anderson

I liked working on 'The Grudge 2.' It was really fun, and I got to meet a lot of cool people. I think the film is a fine example of horror, and I felt excited that I could act in something like that. ~ Shaun Sipos

I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel. ~ Martin Amis

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you. ~ Rick Yancey

People are always saying that I must have been the class clown, with all these voices. No, I was way too shy to be the class clown; I was a class clown's writer. ~ Tom Kenny

You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it certainly does help ~ Mary Jo Putney

This grant gave me more than memories; it gave me a crucial experience that is formative to all writers: the ability to perceive that we become writers in exile, where what we write is the only link across distance and time ... I became a Maryland writer because the community of Juneau took me in. ~ Paula Vogel

Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader. ~ Michael Koryta

Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It's work, and often it's hard work. ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town. ~ Christopher Bollen

It is natural that such a thing as a dead man's scream should give horror, for it is obviously, not a pleasing or ordinary occurrence; but I was used to similar experiences, hence suffered on this occasion only because of a particular circumstance. And, ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.

When the flesh – the lived human experience – becomes word, community
can develop. When we say, 'Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen
to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us.
Wait until you hear whom we met,' we call people together and make our
lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us
into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of
a body of people. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Positive Paradigm is:

. . . a new, inclusive reality map, one people worldwide can easily comprehend and agree upon. It is equally compatible with scriptures and science, bridging the gap between them. It fulfills Einstein's intuited search for the Unified Field Theory, picturing how all parts of creation are related, interwoven and interdependent.

Working with the Positive Paradigm empowers the "substantially new manner of thinking," which, Einstein said, is necessary "if mankind is to survive."
For thousands of years, this genesis formula, the very heart of the creative process, was hidden as the secret treasure of initiates. Its knowledge was transmitted exclusively to qualified students in the inner circles of monastic schools. When Einstein intuited the theory of relativity and made it available to the general public, its long-foreseen abuse materialized. To Einstein's horror, it was misused to explode atomic bombs.

This context justifies making the positive application of Einstein's inspired vision equally public now. For in its traditional context, this three-part formula is an essential piece of the knowledge puzzle. It has the powerful potential to offset earlier abuse with opposite and equally unifying results. A timely shift to the Positive Paradigm could tip the scales of history in favor of human survival.
p. 11. ~ Patricia E. West

You can't blame yourself for what Socrates did. Those birds came because he wanted them to come, at least a part of him did. The pissed off part. Let that roll around in your brain for a while."
Jamie considered this. "No, Eddie. The hurt part, that's what did it."
The crow shrieked again. It seemed louder, and that meant it was closer. Or maybe it was another crow, maybe several. Jamie and Eddie looked toward the sky, listening to the screams. Jamie spoke first.
"We can't let it happen again. We may be the only ones who know the truth about what Socrates can do."
"That thought probably has occurred to Socrates too. ~ Kenneth C. Goldman