Poppy Z. Brite Quotes & Sayings

I'm your nightmare. Did you think you were done with nightmares, now you've become one? — Poppy Z. Brite

I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you. — Poppy Z. Brite

There were books about how to be gay; he'd seen them in stores and libraries. Some of them even had diagrams. But there weren't any diagrams about how to fall in love with your best friend and not fuck everything up. — Poppy Z. Brite

I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years. — Poppy Z. Brite

You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you. — Poppy Z. Brite

Didn't he have to admit, begrudgingly, that in some extra-perverse corner of his brain the idea of having to be out of town before sundown appealed to him? New Orleans had been the only constant thing in his life. But didn't he yet an itchy foot sometimes, didn't he sometimes think about just throwing all his stuff in his car and going?
Of course he did. Everybody did, even normal people, the ones with triple mortgages and orthodontists' bills and responsibilities to everything except what they really wanted. — Poppy Z. Brite

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America! — Poppy Z. Brite

All at once it hit him: this was power too, just as surely as smashing your fist into someone's face, just as surely as putting a hammer through someone's skull. The power to make another person crazy with pleasure instead of fear and pain, to have every cell in another person's body at your thrall. — Poppy Z. Brite

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed. — Poppy Z. Brite

Rickey sometimes wondered what would have become of them if the Peychaud crew hadn't imploded one night in a marathon of apocalyptic drunkenness. No one remembered much of this night, but by the end of it, two cars were totaled, the sous chef and the bartender were in Charity Hospital, the chef was in jail, and the grill guy's wife was filing for divorce. The owner decided to close the place and they found themselves jobless. Rickey guessed this kind of thing was known as a wake-up call — Poppy Z. Brite

And that's another thing. What if I were to talk to Tanker, find out if he's happy at the Polonius Room, see if maybe he wants to come back? He was always such a key part of this kitchen."
Rickey pointed a chocolate-smudged finger at Lenny. "Don't you dare. If I decide I want to talk to him, I'll talk to him. I told you, I don't need you handling my business for me."
"I understand," Lenny said, making a mental note to call Tanker. — Poppy Z. Brite

They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade — Poppy Z. Brite

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror. — Poppy Z. Brite

A chiropractor is a doctor who performs adjustments on the spine," Rickey told the class before bending Gary backward and "adjusting" him, ripping off the false arm and spraying red hair dye all over the classroom. Gary howled in "pain" and collapsed dramatically on the threadbare school carpet, his legs flailing a bit before hitting the floor with a terrible, final-sounding thunk.
That was the first time they were sent to the principal's office together. They had to apologize to their teacher and explain to their classmates that doctor visits were unlikely to result in surprise dismemberments. — Poppy Z. Brite

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex. — Poppy Z. Brite

Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them. — Poppy Z. Brite

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He wasn't much for erasing anyway. Sometimes your mistakes showed you the really interesting connections between your brain, your hand, and your heart, the ones you might otherwise never know were there. They were important even if you had no idea what they meant.
Like now, for instance. Coming back here might be the biggest mistake he'd ever made. But it might also be the most important thing he'd ever done. — Poppy Z. Brite

At some point you have to start letting people save their own life. — Poppy Z. Brite

In every long-term relationship are a few pockets of deep and dangerous water into which one can step unaware if not careful. Eventually, somebody drowns or the interested parties post warning signs around these pockets. — Poppy Z. Brite

I've certainly learned a great deal from my husband, though, and could never have written a book like Liquor without him and the people he introduces me to and the stories he brings home. — Poppy Z. Brite

Let the night come. We are not afraid. — Poppy Z. Brite

The skull always grinned because it knew it would emerge triumphant, that it would comprise the sole identity of the face long after vain baubles like lips and skin and eyes were gone. — Poppy Z. Brite

Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food. — Poppy Z. Brite

I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible. — Poppy Z. Brite

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other. — Poppy Z. Brite

I can't heal your pain but I can see it. And you don't have to be lost. Not forever. — Poppy Z. Brite

The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green. — Poppy Z. Brite

With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood. — Poppy Z. Brite

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book. — Poppy Z. Brite

I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer. — Poppy Z. Brite

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results. — Poppy Z. Brite

And what was I if not death's ghostwriter? — Poppy Z. Brite

New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun. — Poppy Z. Brite

Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything. — Poppy Z. Brite

I like visiting people's homes on Saint Joseph's Day, when people set up altars, serve food as a tribute to the saint, and invite the public - I enjoy that much more than Mardi Gras. — Poppy Z. Brite

Out here the wild things are healthy, the old trees whose roots find sustenance far below the ill-used layer of topsoil, the occasional rosebush gone to green thicket and thorns, the unstoppable kudzu. It is as if they have decided to take back the land for their own. — Poppy Z. Brite

And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it. — Poppy Z. Brite

In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long. — Poppy Z. Brite

I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job. — Poppy Z. Brite

There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me! — Poppy Z. Brite

Ah, relationships. If he was lucky, Luke thought, he would never have another one. — Poppy Z. Brite

The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt. — Poppy Z. Brite

You can only maintain an immensely gothic attitude for so long before either killing yourself or beginning to feel like a poser. — Poppy Z. Brite

When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire. — Poppy Z. Brite

Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely. — Poppy Z. Brite

It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone. — Poppy Z. Brite

If you're ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life. — Poppy Z. Brite

You always felt they were pawns in an indifferent universe, butts of an existential joke with no punch line. — Poppy Z. Brite

They were kissing again, carefully at first, learning the shape and texture of each other's lips, testing the sharpness of the teeth behind them.
It's too fast, said a panicky voice in his mind. And too dangerous. He'll drink your juices, taste your brain, crack your soul open like an egg!
Hell, I think I want him to do all that. — Poppy Z. Brite

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted. — Poppy Z. Brite

My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner. — Poppy Z. Brite

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it. — Poppy Z. Brite

I carried my pint to a corner table and sat just looking at it for a moment: the head of foam, the tiny bubbles ascending through clear gold, the droplets condensing on the sides of the glass, then running down to form a wet circle on the beer mat. Reputations are ruined, marriages destroyed, lifes works forsaken for the beauty of such a sight. There are seven thousand pubs in London. — Poppy Z. Brite

I believe in whatever gets you throught the night. [ ... ] Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four A.M.knows all my secrets. — Poppy Z. Brite

My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove. — Poppy Z. Brite

Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."
Steve backed away. "They bite?"
Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."
By geese?"
Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."
So how come he didn't die?"
This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away. — Poppy Z. Brite

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets. — Poppy Z. Brite

I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies. — Poppy Z. Brite

Sometimes we gotta be brave even when we're scared. We gotta not let being scared keep us from thinkin' straight. That's all brave is, boy, when you come right down to it, not lettin' the fear get you so turned around you start doin' stupid things, instead of what you know you ought to do. — Poppy Z. Brite

But if I die without trying again, I'm a coward. I don't mind having regrets about stuff I've done. It's the regrets about stuff I haven't done that bother me. — Poppy Z. Brite

He has 'le coeur comme un artichaud'. Eddy fumbled for her high school French. 'A heart like an artichoke?' 'Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one. — Poppy Z. Brite

Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood. — Poppy Z. Brite

Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction. — Poppy Z. Brite

In until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights. No one except the girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft dark hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to brush it away from her face, to feel it trickle through his fingers like rain. Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the friends who were never there. The wind blew the French Quarter in behind her, the night air rippling warm down Chartres Street as it slipped away toward the river, smelling of spice and fried oysters and whiskey and the dust of ancient bones stolen and violated. — Poppy Z. Brite

Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you. — Poppy Z. Brite

If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it. — Poppy Z. Brite

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness. — Poppy Z. Brite

Trevor cupped his hands around it, felt Zach's heartbeat throbbing between his palms. The skin of the shaft was textured, slightly rippled beneath the surface. The head was as smooth as satin, as rose petals. Trevor rubbed his thumb across it, squeezed gently, heard Zack suck air in through his teeth and moan as he let it out. He could see blood suffusing the tissue just beneath the translucent skin, a deep dusky rose delicately purpled at the edges, crowned with a single dewy pearl of come. It was as intimate, as raw as holding someone's heart in his hands. — Poppy Z. Brite

If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.
— Poppy Z. Brite