Quotations for Darkling writers

I now have "Quotations for Writers" , so I thought it was time to have a collection of quotations specifically for and about dark writers, for the Darkling writers on this site. Here you'll find quotes from some of my favorite writers. Enjoy, my friends!

- Quotes from the Darkness by the writers of the unknown.

My nightmares are legion; they are with me always. But I'm happy to share them with you, every chance I get.
--Craig Spector

Life is full of terror and beauty, and they can't be ever completely separated.
And in that conflict is our endless drama.
- Thomas Tessier

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
~ Edgar Allan Poe

Why, of course I like being frightened... Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid.
- E. F. Benson in "The Bus-Conductor."

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night.
- Edgar Allan Poe

Warning: bodice ripper stories may be returned to the submitter along with an invoice for editorial pain and suffering.
- Nanobison e-zine online

The object with horror is not so much to frighten as it is to disturb...I can take you to places...where you will frighten yourself.
- Alan M. Clark

I consider the dark side of fantasy to be a
relief from the bright side of reality.
- Forrest J. Ackerman

I don't remember making any conscious choice to do horror. I've simply been drawn to it over and over.
- Lisa Snellings

It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.
- Eric A. Burns, Gossamer Commons, 06-15-05

Madness is part of all of us, all the time...it comes and goes, waxes and wanes.
- Otto Friedrich

Dark fantasy often takes place at night, among the creatures of the night. The tone is often cynical, the heroes Byronic. The difference between dark fantasy and horror are several. Horror exists to evoke fear, as constantly as possible. The moods of dark fantasy are many, and include a pleasant sort of wonder. In horror, the creatures of the night must be fought and overcome by the protagonists; in dark fantasy, they may BE the protagonists, as sympathetic as you like. Dracula is horror. Dark Shadows is dark fantasy.
--otherworlds.net

Not all horror has to frighten.
It can disturb, enlighten, mystify,
and spur many other emotions...
- Jon Hodges, Wicked Hollow

Writing is putting words on the paper until the voices in your head shut up.
- Frank Fradella

Maybe I'm crazy, but then, crazy people never really know, do they?
- {user: dreadstorm}

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.
~ Jim Rohn

If it wasn't for writing, I'd be running down the street, tossing granades into peoples' faces.
--Paul Fussell.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways -- I to die, and you to live.
Which is better God only knows.
Quoted in Plato's "Apology"

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind, rather than your flesh creep.
- Cliff Fadiman

I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.
~ M. C. Escher

What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.
~ M. C. Escher

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
~ Edgar Allan Poe

What difference does it make if the thing you're scared of is real or not?
- Toni Morrison

I want to make your flesh creep.
- Charles Dickens

The writer of a Gothic tale must lie to the reader about the unreality, the "thing" that is feared, must make us believe it exists and must promise within the story that there is a truth that we'll soon understand. However, the writer does not prove the scary thing, whatever it is, is not real and so the story ends with the lingering fear.
- R D Larson

And lots of stuff from Stephen King:

* Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

* The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

* A horror story gives you a way to examine things that bother you, through the vehicle of make-believe. People enjoy going into a dream world where they get scared, but when the lights come up, they know everything will be OK.

* The great thing about writing is that...you can do all these antisocial things and you get paid for them and nobody ever arrests you because
they're all make-believe.
         That way, if you were actually ever driven to do any of those things, the pressure's off because you'd have already written them down. It's therapy.

* The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.

* We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.
- from Danse Macabre

-----

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
- Unknown

In the real world as in dreams,
Nothing is quite as it seems.
- Dean Koontz

Nobody ever comitted suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one.
- Robert Byne

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
- Dorothy Parker

Writing while depressed is like alchemy - tears into ink.
submitted by David

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
~ William Dement

I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.
~ M.C. Escher

For me, a successful horror story shouldn't end happily; it should end with a wrench in the gut, or a nervous look over the shoulder.
- James the Liar

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.
- Logan Pearsall Smith

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion
our adversaries are insane.
- from What Is Man and Other Philosophical Writings

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
- Dorothy Parker
1893 - 1967

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me,
I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place...
and kill him.
- Mark Twain

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-Oscar Levant

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
- Lillian Hellman

Done well, Horror allows us to connect not just with the things we fear, but also the things we fear for. Done well, Horror reminds us why we care.
- Craig Spector

The point of horror is to go against the grain, to not make people comfortable. We want you to read something you've never read before!
- Thomas F. Monteleone

My favorite horror begins with believable people who find themselves in situations that grow stranger and more frightening by degrees.
- Lisa Snellings

Always grab the reader by the throat in
the first paragraph,
sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second,
and hold him against the wall
until the tag line.
-- Paul O'Neil

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar
the door that leads into madness.
- Christopher Morley

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
- George Carlin


 Last words from famous people:

I must go in, the fog is rising.
~~ Emily Dickinson, poet,
d. 1886

Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark.
~~ O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), writer,
d. June 4, 1910

I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and damn it - died in a hotel room.
~~ Eugene O'Neill, writer,
d. November 27, 1953

Lord help my poor soul.
~~ Edgar Allan Poe, writer,
d. October 7, 1849


 Suicide Notes of famous people. . .

And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.
~~ Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort, French writer
1794

To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?
~~ George Eastman, inventor
March 14, 1932

When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
~~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writer
August 17, 1935
( As an advocate for the right-to-die, Gilman committed suicide on August 17, 1935 by taking an overdose of chloroform. She "chose chloroform over cancer.")

The future is just old age and illness and pain....
I must have peace and this is the only way.
~~James Whale, film director
May 29, 1957

The above "death" quotes were found at:
http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying3.html

The unnamed should not be taken for the nonexistent.
- Catherine MacKinnon
[ from Starr: I'm sure she meant something different, but I think it suits the Darkside just fine.]

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The Writer's Café  [13+] Genres: Writing - Hobby/Craft - Activity by Starr* Rathburn--10 yrs w/ WDC