Clive Barker > Quotes

“In his perversity, or his genius, or both,”
― Clive Barker, Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

“The century's getting old and stale; it needs new tribes.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Volumes Four to Six

“Magic is the first and last religion of the world. It has the power to make us whole.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessly happy, weren’t they?”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Meaning is always a latecomer. Beauty and music seduce us first; later ashamed of our own sensuality, we insist on meaning.”
― Clive Barker, Galilee

“There is no delight the equal of dread. As long as it's someone else's.”
― Clive Barker, Dread [Graphic Novel]

“You only saw the darkness, Tammy. There was another side to her. I think there always is, don’t you? There’s always some light in the darkness, somewhere.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Your most treasured depravity is child’s play beside the experiences we offer.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“To be able to fly ? To be smoke , or a wolf ;to know the night , and live in it forever ? That's not so bad . You call us monsters . But when you dream it's of flying , and changing , and living without death .”
― Clive Barker

“she slipped away unseen, like a shadow's shadow.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 6

“I feel things other people don’t. I don’t think it’s particularly clever of me, or anything like that. I just do it.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“I used to tell myself that,” he said. “Day in, day out. Used to try and dream the agonies away. But you can’t. Take it from me. You can’t. They have to be endured.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“I am not your Father. I am but a child, like you. Afraid, like you. Fearing sometimes, as you fear.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“Sin lágrimas, por favor. Es un desperdicio de buen sufrimiento.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“The things I will invent will be, I suspect, mundane by comparison with the truth. And as I said, it's my intention that you should not know the difference. I plan to interweave the elements of my story so cunningly that you'll cease to even care whether an event happened out there in the same world where you walk, or in here, in the head of a crippled man who will never again move from his stepmother's house.”
― Clive Barker, Galilee

“though she hurried him on, he dawdled, his head back, squinting at the stars. There were no revelations to be had there. Just pinpricks of light in a plain heaven. But he saw for the first time how fine that was. That in a world too full of loss and rage they be remote: the minimum of glory. As she led him across the lightless ground, time and again he could not prevent his gaze from straying skyward.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“That’s fucked,” he remarked, sounding a damn sight less nonchalant than he felt.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“This kind of business (murder) required detachment. The trick was to do it almost casually, as you might flick on the radio, or swat a mosquito.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 4

“Her streak of independence, which had first brought her to this unfriendly city, was in studied defiance of her smothering appetite for security. If she gave in to those loving appeals she knew she would take root in domestic soil and not look up and out again for another year. In which time, what adventures might have passed her by?”
― Clive Barker, The Life of Death

“This is the state of the beast,' it said, 'to eat and be eaten.”
― Clive Barker, Primal: From the Cradle to the Grave

“You still love her, don’t you?” Pie said, once they were out and walking. “Of course I love her,” Estabrook said. “That’s why I want her dead.” “There’s no resurrection, Mr. Estabrook. Not for you, at least.” “It’s not me who’s dying,” he said. “I think it is,” came the”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Si el amor se alimenta de música, seguid tocando"
(Shakepeare)”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“Dream!
Forge yourself and rise
Out of your mind and into others.
Men, be women.
Fish, be flies.
Girls, take beards.
Sons, be your mothers.
The future of the world now lies
In coral wombs behind our eyes.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“Was that the point about scattering ashes: that in the end they looked the same? Not just the snout and the tail, but a dog’s ashes and a man’s ashes. All reducible, with the addition of a little flame, to this mottled dust?”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“They're not in the gutter because they had visions, Gentle,” Clem said. “They're there because they've been abused, or they've abused themselves.” “Which means they can't cover their despair the way the rest can. They've got no distractions from their pain. So they get drunk and crazy, and the next day they're even more lost than they were the day before. But I'd still rather trust them than all the bishops and the ministers. Maybe they're naked, but isn't that a holy state?”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: The Reconciliation

“First, my love and thanks to Ben Smith, my Hollywood agent, who has been a true visionary in a job that is often maligned (in this book, for instance)”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“It's always what may not be shown that shows the most. Forbidden words are always the most eloquent.”
― Clive Barker, Tonight, Again

“The World. Hugo had once told Nathaniel in Will's presence, was made by many men, but shaped by few. The important thing was to be one of those few; to find a place in which you could change the repetitive patterns of the many Through political influence and intellectual discourse, and failing either of these , through benign coercion.”
― Clive Barker - Sacrament

“There was a primitive power in naming someone. It gave you a handle on a person.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game