Horror Quotes

“Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen.”
― Kealan Patrick Burke

“The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.”
― Fritz Leiber

“Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann

“They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs.”
― Susan Hill

“O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.

Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“I could not help feeling that they were evil things-- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That seething , half-luminous cloud-background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial; and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

“You see, the strangeness of my case is that now I no longer fear the invisible, I’m terrified by reality.”
― Jean Lorrain

“The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.”
― Fritz Leiber, Heroes and Horrors

“All things are true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live." - Peloquin”
― Clive Barker

“This, then, is the ultimate, that is only, consolation: simply that someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, and — like it or not — peculiar set of experiences to appreciate. Amazing thing to say, the consolation of horror in art is that it actually intensifies our panic, loudens it on the sounding-board of our horror-hollowed hearts, turns terror up full blast, all the while reaching for that perfect and deafening amplitude at which we may dance to the bizarre music of our own misery.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory

“Vampires…always so overdramatic.”
― P.D. Alleva, The Rose Vol. 1

“We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself a form.”
― Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan

“My parents had torn through my innocence and left me with a tar-like substance that was corrupting what was left of me. I could feel it at night; slithering and curling around my soul as it slowly devoured me. It was draining my energy and replacing it with an evil I was afraid to confront.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“GONE TO STATIC

it sounds better than it is,
this business of surviving,
making it through
the wrong place
at the wrong time
and living

to tell.
when the talk shows and movie credits
wear off, it's just me and my dumb
luck. this morning
I had that dream again:
the one where I'm dead.

I wake up and nothing's
much different. everything's gone
sepia, a dirty bourbon glass
by the bed, you're
still dead.
I could stumble

to the shower,
scrub the luck of breath off my skin
but it's futile.
the killer always wins.
it's just a matter
of time.

and I have
time. I have grief and liquor to
fill it. tonight, the liquor and I are
talking to you. the liquor says, 'remember'
and I fill in the rest, your hands, your smile.
all those times. remember.

tonight the liquor and I
are telling you about our day.
we made it out of bed. we miss you.
we were surprised by the blood between
our legs. we miss you. we made it to the video
store, missing you. we stopped
at the liquor store

hoping the bourbon would stop
the missing. there's always more
bourbon, more missing
tonight, when we got home,
there was a stray cat
at the door.

she came in.
she screams to be touched.
she screams
when I touch her.
she's right
at home.

not me.
the whisky is open
the vcr is on.
I'm running
the film backwards
and one by one

you come back to me,
all of you.
your pulses stutter to a begin
your eyes go from fixed to blink
the knives come out of your chests, the chainsaws

roar out
from your legs
your wounds seal over
your t-cells multiply, your tumors shrink
the maniac killer
disappears

it's just you and me
and the bourbon and the movie
flickering together
and the air breathes us and I
am home, I am
lucky

I am right
before everything
goes black”
― Daphne Gottlieb, Final Girl

“No I'm not a dream, I'm your worst nightmare”
― C.T. Todd

“Always just a brainstorm away from our next disaster...”
― Birgit Pratcher, June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies

“My power grew angry that it was confined to my petite frame and pulled against my taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through my skin to lay flat against my outer edge. The glowing energy began to solidify against my flesh; it lengthened to mold itself to my frame and contained me in a transparent cocoon. I flexed my fingers against the waxy surface and began to panic. I was cut off from my coven now and could not feel their thoughts. I could see the panic on their faces as I fell onto my side to convulse.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“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, Chloe of the Night

“And she arose from her deathbed in a gossamer gown, with eyes the color of starlight and hair as black as the night. And those who were her captors trembled, for the scent of death and madness emanated from her soul, and yet she was not dead. She moved like the spiders that creep in the treetops, and none could look away.
Taking her first captor in hand, she fed deep and ravenous. And so it was that Myst, Queen of the Indigo Court, was born from the blood of the dead.”
― Yasmine Galenorn, Night Myst

“If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you”
― American Horror Story

“Death is not friendly. It's dark, black where you look at it. You're all alone. But it's no different when you're alive, right? No matter how many relationships we seem to have, we're all alone. - Misaki Mei”
― Yukito Ayatsuji

“I could hear the chaotic laughter trailing behind me. It turned the ageless trees into a menace. They loomed around me, while hiding him. The branches tore at my skin in an effort to bind me, while weeds sought to shackle my ankles, so that I could go no further. The pain they caused was minor, when I compared it to the searing inferno at my core.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“Horror immobolizes us because it is made of contradictory feelings: fear and seduction, repulsion and attraction. Horror is a fascination...Horror is immobility, the great yawn of empty space, the womb and the hole in the earth, the universal Mother and the great garbage heap...With horror we cannot have recourse to flight or combat, there remains only Adoration or Exorcism.”
― Octavio Paz

“The temperature in the office plummeted.
Frost crackled.
It spider-webbed across the glass of the window. His mind played tricks. It couldn’t be frost, not in the summer.
Death closed in around him.”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Double Cross

“I'm Allen Walker!"
My life....is over...I'm going to die....”
― Katsura Hoshino, D.Gray-man, Vol. 11

“Horror on earth is real and it is everyday. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“No valía la pena perder el tiempo en intentar cambiar el mundo; bastaba con evitar que el mundo lo cambiase a uno.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Las luces de septiembre

“We're going to have such fun, you and I.”
― J.D. Barker, The Fourth Monkey

“A convicted felon has rights, too. Your company took advantage of my client at a low point in his life. Like a helpless child, he couldn’t fight for himself. It makes me wonder how you sleep at night.”
Aiden’s brow hiked. “The helpless child was the boy he orphaned when he killed his father.”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Double Cross

“First, she had been unconsciously absorbing this virginity rule
without ever questioning it. Second . . . it struck her that virginity
was a male fetish wrapped tightly around another male fetish called
“purity.” Emma was certain that whoever originated the concept of virginity
was a man.”
― Kwei Quartey, Last Seen in Lapaz