Ghost Quotes

“In this way, the Dream House was a haunted house. You were the sudden, inadvertent occupant of a place where bad things had happened. And then it occurs to you one day, standing in the living room, that you are this house's ghost: you are the one wandering from room to room with no purpose, gaping at the moving boxes that are never unpacked, never certain what you're supposed to do. After all, you don't need to die to leave a mark of psychic pain. If anyone is living in the Dream House now, he or she might be seeing the echo of you.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Lord Snow wants to take my place now.' He sneered. 'I'd have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this aurochs.'
'I'll take that wager, Ser Alliser', Jon said. 'I'd love to see Ghost juggle.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Today is an ephemeral ghost...

A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."

In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!

But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...

A day of unlocked potential.

Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you?

Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Aaron: Dude, one thing the guy said is you don’t taunt voodoo.
Zak: Am I taunting?
Aaron: Dude, you’re taunting the crap out of it!
Zak: I am sorry, I am not taunting you I am just talking...Talking loudly.”
― Zak Bagans

“The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics

“Burning bridges behind you is understandable. It's the bridges before us that we burn, not realizing we may need to cross, that brings regret.”
― Anthony Liccione

“What happened to you?" she asked.
"Ben was feeling artistic. Wanted to rearrange my face.”
― Stacey Kade, Body & Soul

“You could never kill a wyte, child. Instead of thinking of death, you need to think in terms of aging. The old cannot help but become less ambitious and more accepting as each moment ticks on by.”
― Frank Lambert, Ghost Doors

“I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.”
― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

“Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption of another, the carrying of it--was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had left behind.”
― Lauren Oliver, Liesl & Po

“Come in! come in !’ he sobbed.
‘Cathy, do come. Oh do -once more! Oh! my heart’s darling! hear me this time - Catherine, at last!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Anger is a ghost.
Human is the host.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“Careful, Abbey," Caspian warned. "Don't get too close."
"He killed her, Caspian! He was the reason she was at the bridge that night."
"I know but--"
Vincent suddenly turned to face Caspian. "Could you just shut up? All this back and forht is really confusing. I'll get to you in a minute."
Caspian's jaw dropped.
So did mine.
"You can see him?" I asked. "Who are you?"
"Not who," Vincent said, a tone of sheer entitlement in his voice. "What.”
― Jessica Verday, The Haunted

“He’d wormed his way into Justin’s life like a grub—preying on his weaknesses and his sexual orientation.”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Crossbones

“We designate the spirit of the well as 'she' because in most of her personifications she takes a female form, though not invariably. She appears in many guises - ghost, witch, saint, mermaid, fairy, and sometimes in animal form, often as a sacred fish - and her presence permeates well lore, and indeed water lore generally.”
― Colin Bord

“Sometimes, I am the beast in the darkness. Sometimes, I am the ghost.”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“I couldn't loose somebody else like that, without even the chance to say good-bye. Not again. Not her.”
― Stacey Kade

“More ghosts have been created in bedrooms than anywhere else.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Creeping Shadow

“If we found a ticket to Disneyland would you think we should arrest Mickey Mouse?”
― Diane L. Randle, Spectral Witness

“Many people, after spending a long weekend being stealthily seduced by this grand dame of the South, mistakenly think that they have gotten to know her: they believe (in error) that after a long stroll amongst the rustling palmettoes and gas lamps, a couple of sumptuous meals, and a tour or two, that they have discovered everything there is to know about this seemingly genteel, elegant city. But like any great seductress, Charleston presents a careful veneer of half-truths and outright fabrications, and it lets you, the intended conquest, fill in many of the blanks. Seduction, after all, is not true love, nor is it a gentle act. She whispers stories spun from sugar about pirates and patriots and rebels, about plantations and traditions and manners and yes, even ghosts; but the entire time she is guarded about the real story. Few tourists ever hear the truth, because at the dark heart of Charleston is a winding tale of violence, tragedy and, most of all, sin.”
― James Caskey, Charleston's Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City

“God, how I loved him. Not him exactly, let me try again: I loved his ghost.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories

“The presence of ghosts is only as close as your belief.
The existence of aliens is only as far as your rejection.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“The subject dropped, and we sat on in the dusk that was rapidly deepening into night. The door into the hall was open at our backs, and a panel of light from the lamps within was cast out to the terrace. Wandering moths, invisible in the darkness, suddenly became manifest as they fluttered into this illumination, and vanished again as they passed out of it. One moment they were there, living things with life and motion of their own, the next they quite disappeared. How inexplicable that would be, I thought, if one did not know from long familiarity, that light of the appropriate sort and strength is needed to make material objects visible.

Philip must have been following precisely the same train of thought, for his voice broke in, carrying it a little further.

'Look at that moth,' he said, 'and even while you look it has gone like a ghost, even as like a ghost it appeared. Light made it visible. And there are other sorts of light, interior psychical light which similarly makes visible the beings which people the darkness of our blindness.' ("Expiation")”
― E.F. Benson, The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

“By the Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, 'In the name of God, who are you?' He got up and went out, saying, 'Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her husband and told him. 'One of the good people has been with us,' said he. ("Village Ghosts")”
― W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

“I come home—and I have a feeling of returning like a ghost to its haunt.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

“Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say. ("Smoke Ghost")”
― Fritz Leiber, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else there - it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others

“No! no! My engagement is with no bride--the worms! the worms expect me! I am a dead man--I have been slain by robbers--my body lies at Wurtzburg--at midnight I am to be buried--the grave is waiting for me--I must keep my appointment!”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

“Eight-and-twenty years,' said I, 'I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.'

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.

'Ay,' she broke in; 'and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty.' She swayed her head slowly from side to side. 'A many things to see and sorrow for.' ("The Red Room")”
― H.G. Wells