Clive Barker > Quotes

“Youthful pleasures had possessed the appeal of newness, but as the years had crept on, and mild sensation lost its potency, stronger and stronger experiences had been called for.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart: A Novel

“I was watching the power at work behind the face of the world. What I had always assumed to be a calamitous unseen war, waged in sky and rock and on occasion invading your human world, was not a bloody battle, with legions slaughtering one another; it was this endless fish-market bartering.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“He got to his feet and stumbled away from the stench of his vomit, making his way through this graveyard of old glories, heading for the darkest place he could find in which to hide his giddy head.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Some die too soon. Most live too long.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Somos nuestros propios cementerios; nos instalamos entre las tumbas de las personas que éramos.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“with time, it would all come to fit in some grand design, or so his untethered thoughts persuaded him.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Every moment she wasted saying No to what she KNEW, was a moment lost to comprehension. That her worldview couldn't contain such a mystery without shattering was its liability, and a problem for another day.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“At thirty-four, she'd decided she'd grown out of sex. Bed was for sleep, especially for fat girls.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood Volume 2

“What was below could remain below no longer.

The Nightbreed were rising.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“He was no longer innocent. With this slaughter he became the killer Decker had persuaded him he was. In murdering the prophet he made the prophecy true.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“You think I’m finished, so you’re leaving me to be crucified by every piece of shit journalist in the fucking country.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Sweets to the sweet," he murmured,”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 5

“Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“It was bad enough that these creatures had children and art; that they might also have vision was too dangerous a thought to entertain.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“Men. Young men. Legal age, mind you. But young nonetheless. And it’s not what you think. When we meet, we make … magic.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Why do boys always love talking about ghosts and murders and hangings?’ ‘Because it’s exciting,’ Wendell said.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always: A Fable

“Con el tiempo todas las cosas se cansan y comienzan a buscar algún oponente que las salve de sí mismas.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“IT WAS THE PIVOTAL teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course—thousands in fact—but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“Women are these wonderful mysteries and they excite me on all kinds of levels. Their power over us is, I think, often a moral power as well as a sexual power. I think women, generally speaking, have a better sense of what is whole and good and sensible. The old feminist line, 'Take the toys from the boys' is an extremely sensible observation, you know?”
― Clive Barker

“You fucking idiot! What does it matter what it costs to kill it? It's not human. It's out of Hell.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 3

“ignorant of the place it had been and blind to where it was headed.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“No hay mayor placer que el terror. Siempre y cuando sea el de otra persona”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“In essence, it came down to this: he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or more of her sex were doting on him. Yes, he knew his face was finely made, his forehead broad, his gaze haunting, his lips sculpted so that even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a living mirror to tell him so. More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some undiscovered self that would free him from being”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

“Extinct,” Steep murmured. “Yes.” He smiled. “Extinct, extinct, extinct.” It was like a mantra:”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“Well, she’s lucky. She still has her little dominion here in Coldheart Canyon.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“Revulsion gave heat to his heals.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“Women had always existed: they had lived, a species to themselves, with the demons. But they had wanted playmates: and together they had made men.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 2

“Allí el placer era dolor, y viceversa. Y él lo conocía tan bien que era como sentirse en casa.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“What I do know is that I have never found clowns remotely funny. I am not alone in this, I think. More people find clowns disturbing or distressing rather than raucously amusing. Is it that the nature of human existence has changed so radically in the last century or so that what was funny to our grandparents and great-grandparents is now tragic or terrifying?”
― Clive Barker, The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus