Clive Barker > Quotes

“I want to be remembered as an imaginer, someone who used his imagination as a way to journey beyond the limits of self, beyond the limits of flesh and blood, beyond the limits of even perhaps life itself, in order to discover some sense of order in what appears to be a disordered universe. I'm using my imagination to find meaning, both for myself and, I hope, for my readers."-Clive Barker”
― Clive Barker

“After a battle lasting many ages,
The Devil won,
And said to God
(who had been his Maker):
"Lord,
We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation
By my hand.
I would not wish you
to think me cruel,
So I beg you, take three things
From this world before I destroy it.
Three things, and then the rest will be
wiped away."

God thought for a little time.
And at last He said:
"No, there is nothing."
The Devil was surprised.
"Not even you, Lord?" he said.
And God said:
"No. Not even me.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Never a truer word said or thought. Anything was possible.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

“It’s all part of the dance, she thought; the dust, her hands, the light that was spiraling around her: it’s all part of the same wonderful dance. And I’m in it.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Minds weren't pictures at an exhibition, all numbered, and hung in order of influence, one marked "Cunning," the next, "Impressionable." They were scrawls; they were sprawling splashes of graffiti, unpredictable, unconfinable.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“Let the mad find wisdom in their madness for the sane, and let the sane be grateful."
"Is that a famous saying?"
"Maybe if I say it often enough.”
― Clive Barker

“Hopelessness is reasonable. But nothing of worth in my life came of reason. Not my love, not my art, not my heaven. So I am hopeful”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“I'm a poet,' the young man said, 'And it's my job to remember the sadness of things.”
― Clive Barker, Beneath The Surface of Clive Barker's Abarat

“How many human eyes ...
had snatched glimpses of their secret anatomies, down the passage of years?”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Volumes 1-6

“The Devil is by no means the worst that there is; I would rather have dealings with him than with many a human being. He honours his agreements much more promptly than many a swindler on Earth. To be true, when payment is due he comes on the dot; just as twelve strikes, fetches his soul and goes off home to Hell like a good Devil. He’s just a businessman as is right and proper. —-J.N. NESTROY, Hollenangst”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“Hell is reimagined by each generation. Its terrain is surveyed for absurdities and remade in a fresher mold; its terrors are scrutinized and, if necessary, reinvented to suit the current climate of atrocity; its architecture is redesigned to appall the eye of the modern damned.”
― Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

“I've never worked where it was hard to be gay. Besides, being gay is a spectacular irrelevance to getting on with your life.”
― Clive Barker

“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, Books of Blood: Volumes 1-3

“the scent of sweet cherry had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Love makes its demands, and you listen. You can't bargain with it. You can't fight it. Not if it's really love.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else - but I'm absolutely nothing special.”
― Clive Barker

“Hell was easy; romance was hard.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessy happy, weren't they? To Kristy this had always seemed self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn't blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart

“Kaufman almost smiled at the perfection of its horror. He felt an offer of insanity tickling the base of his skull, tempting him into oblivion, promising a blank indifference to the world.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume One

“We're living; but we impersonate the dead better than the dead themselves.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume 6

“..which should teach you something about this world. That it's a place where whatever you work for and care about is bound to be taken away from you sooner or later, and there isn't a thing you can do about it.”
― Clive Barker

“Then we realized that your Kind like to make laws. Like to decree what's what, and whether it's good or not. And the world, being a loving thing, and not wishing to disappoint you or distress you, indulges you. Behaves as though your doctrines are in some way absolute.”
― Clive Barker, Weave World

“This is a forsaken place...I can think of no use for a place like this, except that you could say of it: I saw the heart of nothing, and survived.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

“However this miraculous place worked, it seemed real enough. The sun was hot, the soda was cold, the sky was blue, the grass was green. What more did he need to know?”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Anyway, it's gone. And there's nothing left in my pocket to charm you. So from now on it's going to have to be tears or nothing I'm afraid.
That's all I've got left to tell you see: tears, tears, tears.”
― Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone

“What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether this was a real place or a dream? It felt real, and that was all that mattered.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out the landing window, there--hanging between the bare branches of the trees--was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man's smile.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“Zombies are the liberal nightmare. Here you have the masses, whom you would love to love, appearing at your front door with their faces falling off; and you’re trying to be as humane as you possibly can, but they are, after all, eating the cat. And the fear of mass activity, of mindlessness on a national scale, underlies my fear of zombies.”
― Clive Barker

“He was to be their page, their book, the vessel for their autobiographies. A book of blood. A book made of blood. A book written in blood.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vol. 1

“One part of love is innocence, One part of love is guilt, One part the milk, that in a sense Is soured as soon as spilt, One part of love is sentiment, One part of love is lust, One part is the presentiment Of our return to dust.” Eight lines, and it was all over;”
― Clive Barker, Weaveworld