Clive Barker > Quotes

“Three is the number of those who do holy work;

Two is the number of those who do lover's work;

One is the number of those who do perfect evil

Or perfect good.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Words are sexier than flesh.”
― Clive Barker

“I dreamt a limitless book,
A book unbound,
Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance
On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
New heavens supposed;
New states, new souls.”
― Clive Barker

“We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“Witch, do this for me,
Find me a moon
made of longing.
Then cut it sliver thin,
and having cut it,
hang it high
above my beloved's house,
so that she may look up
tonight
and see it,
and seeing it, sigh for me
as I sigh for her,
moon or no moon.”
― Clive Barker i Days of Magic Nights of War i

“you must be careful with kindness. It's usually mistaken for weakness by stupid people.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Welcome to the worst nightmare of all, reality!”
― Clive Barker (Author)

“Flesh could not keep its glamour, nor eyes their sheen. They would go to nothing soon. But monsters are forever.”
― Clive Barker

“She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Walk with care in dark places, and do not put your faith in anyone who promises you the forgiveness of the Lord or a certain place in Paradise.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they’re feeling righteous.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“…there’s nothing in the world more fun than doing something you’re good at.”
― Clive Barker, Galilee

“She was a sea: and I had to swim in her.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Volume Two

“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

“Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.
Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd be good news?”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“A soul of water a soul of stone.
A soul by name a soul unknown.
The hours unmake our flesh our bone.
The Soul is all and all alone!”
― Clive Barker

“Sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree

O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree,
But it was eaten by a newt,
And now I have no cuddly fruit,
O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree!”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“Believe me, when I say;
There are no two powers
That command the soul.
One is God
The other is the tide.
-Anon
From the novel Abarat”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

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

“Give me B movies or give me death! ”
― Clive Barker

“There is no such thing as originality. It has all been said before, suffered before. If a person knows that, is it any wonder love becomes mechanical and death just a scene to be shunned? There is no absolute knowledge to be gained from either. Just another ride on the merry-go-round, another blurred scene of faces smiling and faces grieved.”
― Clive Barker

“I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica

“There are things that are more important than the news and what’s happening today. There are these archetypes which are part of the human imagination since humans were presumably imaginative. And I think that’s what [people] find touching, these eternal ideas. It’s one of the things that makes fantasy something that tends to stand the test of time because we’re reading, 50 years later, The Lord of the Rings.”
― Clive Barker

“Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him.
"Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her.
"It takes a man with real heart"
—he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest—
"to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Dorothea: "What the fuck are you?"

Nix: "A man who wanted to be a God...then changed his mind.”
― Clive Barker-Lord of Illusions