Clive Barker > Quotes

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“I used to live in Los Angeles,” Norma said. “Off a winding road called Coldheart Canyon.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“I thought I'd gone to the limits,' Frank explains. 'I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible....Some things have to be endured. Take it from me. And that's what makes the pleasures so sweet.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“You don’t think that room downstairs was made by the Devil, or his wife?” “I don’t want to know who made it,” Tammy said. “But I know who fed it; who made it important. People. Just like you and me. Addicted to the place.”
― Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

“He told me he loved me, Clem.’ Oh Lord.’ ‘And I believed him.’ ‘How many dozens of men have told you that?’ ‘Yes, but he was different ‘Famous last words.”
― Clive Barker, Imajica: A spellbinding epic fantasy novel

“Experience was made up of endless ambiguities—of motive, of feeling, of cause and effect—and if he was to win under such circumstances, he had to understand how those ambiguities worked.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Non c'è mai nulla che cominci.
Non esiste un primo momento: non v'è parola o luogo da cui nasca questa storia o qualunque altra. Tutte le trame si possono sempre far risalire a qualche narrazione precedente, e alle narrazioni ancora anteriori, anche se, via via che la voce narrante si allontana, il legame sembrerà divenire più tenue, perché ogni epoca vorrà che la vicenda venga narrata come se fosse una sua creazione.
Così, ciò che è pagano verrà santificato, ciò che è tragico diventerà risibile; i grandi amanti si piegheranno al sentimentalismo, e i demoni si ridurranno a giocattoli a molla.
Nulla è fisso. La spola va e viene, realtà e finzione, intelletto e materia, tessendo trame che possono avere in comune una cosa soltanto: in esse è nascosta una filigrana che con il tempo diventerà un mondo.

Quindi dev'essere arbitrario il luogo dove decidiamo di imbarcarci. Un luogo a mezza strada fra un passato semidimenticato e un futuro appena intravisto.
Questo luogo, per esempio.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“Was that what made him a European? To want to have his story told once more, passed down the line to another eager listener who would, in his time, disregard its lesson and repeat his own suffering? Ah, how he loved tradition.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Sure, work could be a pain in the ass, but it was purpose, and what was a life, any life, his life, without purpose?”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“But better to be buried in the rubble than succumb to the Mask. And be flattered, at the end, that Fate had at least offered her a choice of extinctions.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“Sanity is a movable feast. One man's madness is another's politics.”
― Clive Barker, In the Flesh

“He is not angry now; knives are not angry. He is not tearful now; knives are not tearful. He is simply sharp and keen and inevitable.”
― Clive Barker, Chiliad: A Meditation

“She got up and crossed to the window. Like father like daughter, he thought: window freaks, both of them.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“His eyelids closed—buckled, really—the bones in his face so fragile they shattered under the weight of his very lids as he dropped to the threshold of existence. His last breath had already left him. And as he fell, life did the same.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there’d be no show at all, then casting its rags off one by one.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“And Quaid knew, meeting the clown's vacant stare through an air turned bloody, that
there was worse in the world than dread. Worse than death itself.
There was pain without hope of healing. There was life that refused to end, long after the
mind had begged the body to cease. And worst, there were dreams come true.”
― Clive Barker, Dread [Graphic Novel]

“Isn’t there anything you care about?” “All is death, woman. All is pain. Love breeds loss. Isolation breeds resentment. No matter which way we turn, we are beaten. Our only true inheritance is death. And our only legacy, dust.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Damn fool that she was to have valued pride over sensation.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you … Old words; old rituals. But they still made sound commercial sense. Talk of Power and Might would always attract an audience. Lords never went out of fashion.”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld

“It was enough to know they had no Devil on their backs. Just old humanity, cheated of love, and ready to pull down the world on its head.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Got you, little thief!” he roared, dragging Harvey back into his splintery embrace.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“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: A Novel

“I think it's an indulgence to [write] the other [non-linear] way. I think it's a kind of cowardice. There are places in anyone's books that are going to be easier than other parts. And if when you come to a part that's difficult and think, 'Hm, I'll skip that,' all you're doing is lining up these problems that are going to wait for you and kick you in the ass. So I'm very rigorous with myself. I won't allow myself to go on to a fun bit, like the sex. I think if you write big books like I do, and don't write in a linear fashion, something inevitably gets screwed up in the emotional flow. In Coldheart Canyon there are many characters, and each character has its own arc. The arcs start at divergent points, but they converge at roughly the same point. So what you try to do is induce in the reader an incredible feeling of excitement, because everybody's arcs are resolving because they're encountering one another, right? It's not that they're resolving in an abstraction. They're resolving because A meets B meets C and so on.”
― Clive Barker

“Las estaciones se buscan una a la otra, como el hombre y la mujer, a fin de poder curarse de sus propios excesos.

La primavera, si se dilata más de una semana de su límite final, comienza a sentir ansias de que el verano ponga fin a los días de promesas perpetuas. El verano, a su vez, pronto comienza a sudar, pidiendo algo que aplaque su calor y el más mórbido de los otoños finalmente acaba por cansarse de la benevolencia y muere de ganas de que una rápida y penetrante escarcha aniquile toda su fecundidad.

Incluso el invierno —la estación más dura, más implacable— sueña con las llamas que en breve lo derretirán, mientras febrero avanza lentamente. Con el tiempo, todas las cosas se cansan y comienzan a buscar algún oponente que las salve de sí mismas.”
― Clive Barker

“There's no delight the equal of dread.”
― Clive Barker, Dread [Graphic Novel]

“The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there’d be no show at all, then casting off its rags one by one.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal

“Fear in front and bedlam behind.”
― Clive Barker

“The less alive you were the better chance you had at living. There was probably a lesson in there somewhere, though it was a bitter one. Live like a stone and death might pass you by.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament

“As she did so, a rotund, bearded individual in his fifties, a coat draped over his shoulders and a brimmed hat on his head, stepped forward. Frederick Cammell,”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld