Quotes & Sayings About Gothic Horror

Admitting defeat? How un-huntress like of you. — Yvonne Nicolas

Must beauty blossom, rooted in decay,
And night devour its flaming hues alway? — Clark Ashton Smith

River had never lost his cool, not since I'd know him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer's day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when girls were fainting and men were slitting their throats in front of you. — April Genevieve Tucholke

The original Gothic horror tales focused on personalities deformed through loneliness. Ghouls, vampires, werewolves: all made, not born. But the isolation? Are even such as these ever truly alone? Perhaps the psyche has always been more complex than that, desire eternally more potent than terror. Surely, none prowl entirely in solitude. — Robert Dunbar

You were dropped as a child, weren't you?" Varen asked her.
"Maybe once or twice," Gwen said, "but at least I wasn't raised by highly literate vampires who, every night just before bed, fed me a steady diet of dark sarcasm and gothic horror fiction."
"Every morning before bed," Varen corrected. Stepping forward, he moved toward the headstone. "We slept during the day. — Kelly Creagh

They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs. — Susan Hill

Ha!' cackled the fiend, 'I expect you'd like revenge on that husband of yours. Murder shouldn't go unpunished, and no creature enjoys delivering chastisement as much as I. What about giving him a taste of his own medicine? If you'd be so kind as to lend me your body, I'll set him dancing to my tune.'

The wife's spectre grimaced and nodded, at which the wicked Likho stripped off the nightgown, then the dead woman's pliant skin, peeling back the flaccid folds. These it left in a slack heap.

It gobbled her flesh and sucked the bones clean. These it hid behind the stove, before inserting itself inside the empty, wrinkled carcass, taking the former position of the corpse. Its fat tongue swiped the last juices from around its lips.

When the husband returned home, all was as it had been; there was not a speck of blood to be seen, although the strangest smell of rotten eggs lingered — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Listen,
listen with your eyes,
and your lips.
Listen with your skin,
and your blood.
Can you hear us,
at the edges? — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Pushing through some viney branches, she comes into a clearing andfinds a sight that makes her hush
and not just her voice but every part of her, like feeling silence in her deep guts ...
It's something she can feel in the back of her throat, her dislike of the scene
as though what she's looking upon is unholy, the conjunction of chaos and order in a forced fit where everything is stretched and bent in the wrong way like those baby legs. — Alden Bell

I'd love for readers to read what books are about so that if they are expecting happy endings in dark horror novels, they won't reach for the Vallium or something worse! — Carole Gill

Our very existence refuses your laws and
your science, your religions and your
philosophies. — B.E. Scully

He would die in this room, buried alive by the weight of his life. — Christine Fonseca

Yet from thy lethal lips and thine alone,
Love would I drink, as dew from poison-bloom. — Clark Ashton Smith

Vijaya prefers to eat alone. Rob ushered her into the room and held a chair for her, then sat across from her. "Many Indians regard eating as something that should be done in private. Considering the table manners of some of our best people, one can see their point."
Patricia Frances Rowell — Patricia Frances Rowell

Or do you like being frightened?"

Hugh, though generally intelligent, is dense in certain ways; this is one of them.

"Why, of course, I like being frightened," I said. "I want to be made to creep and creep and creep. Fear is the most absorbing and luxurious of emotions. One forgets all else if one is afraid. — E.F. Benson

And his soul plunged downward, drowning in that deep pit: he felt that could never again escape from this smothering flood of pain and ugliness, from the eclipsing horror and pity of it all. And as he walked, he twisted his own neck about, and beat the air with his arm like a wing, as if he had received a blow in his kidneys. He felt that he might be clean and free if he could only escape into a single burning passion -- hard, and hot, and glittering -- of love, hatred, terror, or disgust. But he was caught, he was strangling, in the web of futility. — Thomas Wolfe

The beauty of a woman is that no two are the same. They are all different. It follows then that to be successful as a lover, you cannot make love to any two in the same way. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

We're in high school. If it didn't come from the school cafeteria, we like it. — S.K.N. Hammerstone

In the attempt to find the just measure of horror and terror, I came upon the writing of Carole Gill whose work revealed a whole new dimension to me. The figure of the gothic child was there. Stoker's horror was there. Along with the romance! At the heart of her writing one stumbles upon a genuine search for that darkness we lost with the loss of Stoker."

~Dr. Margarita Georgieva ~ Gothic Readings in The Dark — Carole Gill

The world is a parable-the habitation of symbols-the phantoms of spiritual things immortal shown in material shape. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes. — Edgar Allan Poe

He knew what he had found here, a precious treasure that had remained hidden away for so long. To the right man, she could give more happiness and fulfilment than any amount of gold, or gems. Just by holding her in his arms, he knew this. He had the key to her heart in his hands. All he had to do was unlock her, and he would enjoy the most wondrous chest of delights. He knew it and he knew, too, that nothing would ever compensate him should he lose her. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

It was so close to October that Halloween was knocking at his heart. — Barry Eysman

The questions push me further into the space in between, the place where my madness lays waiting for me. I struggle with each question, determined to extract some sort of answer, an explanation for everything that has happened so far. But no answers come and I'm forced to acknowledge the feeling lodged between my two worlds
Terror. — Christine Fonseca

Did you feel it? Did you feel the darkness in their souls and their countless evil deeds? Their fate was to die in my grasp, beneath the sting of my bite. — Demetri Bithanos From The Dragon Queen Series

If on thoughts of death we are fed,
Thus, a coffin, became my bed. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Crook your finger;
they'll come closer.
Pull the covers tighter to your chin;
in beside you they'll creep. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real. — Peter Murphy

Romance is not the giving of flowers, or any other gift. It is a way of life, a way of being. Romance is every thought, gesture, and deed on your part to make another feel special, even if only for a moment. For a moment can last a lifetime in the heart of the recipient, be that the one you love, or a complete stranger. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

The stars sparkled above the mist shrouded tents and caravans of the carnival. The night crackled with an odd vibration, as if a veil of peculiarity settled over the company. — A.F. Stewart

Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Walk with this tomorrow night. If nothing happens, then
don't come back. Forget about us, this place, but if you feel the
Nightwalker in you awaken, then return to where you belong.
Return to me, and the streets will run red with blood. — Keith Kekic

Perhaps we only notice things when the time comes for us to pay attention to them. When they need us to see them ... — Nancy Holder

Pure evil has no real place. And that means, doesn't it, that I have no place. Except, perhaps, in the art that repudiates evil - the vampire comics, the horror novels, the old gothic tales - or in the roaring chants of the rock stars who dramatize the battles against evil that each mortal fights within himself. — Anne Rice

I have learned one lesson in all this and I will share it knowing it will do no one any good. The lesson is this: "There are none more complicit in one's undoing than one's own heart". — James Pratt

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Bodies lay strewn all around. Turkish and Wallachian warriors caught in the intimate indiscriminate embrace of death. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you. — Jaye Frances

He breathed in hard. The stench of blood filled his lungs. Only now, for the first time, could he truly appreciate it. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book,before a mad woman sets the bed curtains on fire. — April Genevieve Tucholke

That Abbie is such a freaking brat who doesn't know anything! My William is wasting away in that castle and that stuck up, self-righteous cow doesn't even care because now she's just all ooooo, Peter I love you! Well I don't love Peter and he's a jerk. Let's go bust down the door!" She sat back and calmly pushed her hair from her face, "Now would you get me a soda? — Gwenn Wright

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

Ever since I could remember reading, I was a fan of Horror Novels, then just an Avid reader of all things dark and deeply written or off the cuff styles and not so bland and sterile as if the grammar police forensically wrote it to be safe, then re-edited it to be even more annoyingly not from an emotion but from a text book, I love dark dark fiction that's why i write it. Some of my favorite writers are Anne Rice, Hunter S. Thompson and Clive Barker, perhaps you can sense this in my writing. — Liesalette

Horace, however, had arrayed himself in a Gothic assortment of crushed velvet, black satin, and patent leather that shouldn't have been allowed in my view. He might as well have I AM A VAMPIRE embroidered across the front of his watered-silk waistcoat. An outfit like that is going to get him staked one of these days; it's exactly what Boris Karloff would have worn, if he had joined the cast of Rocky Horror Motion Picture Show. — Catherine Jinks

But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Good and evil exist in all of us.
a moment's temptation takes us on a wrong path.
On that path may lurk foul fiends,
inhuman, yet feeding, needing
all our weaknesses: vanity, indolence and envy,
Easy fruits for evil appetites,
our flesh, a tasty afterthought,
our bones flung asunder. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Touch the stone,' said Beliah, 'and you will touch "reality", or what the ignorant of all ages think "reality" is. That kind of truth will kill you, man. You won't see morning! I have kept you all your life from such things as remorse, terror, pity. Touch the stone, and those same angels will change you into an old poor pathetic deluded dying creature. Hubert, a nurse has to shave you, your hand shakes so much. You know that don't you? You dribble at every orifice, Hubert. You've begun to smell this past year or two...' He suddenly howled as if I had actually touched the stone,'YOU WILL BE RAVAGED IN FIRES OF GRACE!'
I heard Nurse McGregor in the next ward. 'Good evening,' came her cheerful voice to the looney who had strangled his sweetheart and then buried her in his garden. 'Is it cocoa tonight, or tea, or milk?"
Beliah was weeping. Outside the eaves dripped. The whole earth was drenched with the grief of Beliah. He wept inside me. I felt his marvellous tears on my face. — George Mackay Brown

People do not ever change. The person you see later is merely the one that was hidden from you in the beginning.
Shane KP O'Neill - The Gates Of Babylon. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

All she could see was her demise and it called out a tempting ruse, offering a suffering less potent than what sickened the living. — B.B. Wynter

The cabin in the woods is to the American Gothic what the haunted castle is to the European - the seed from which everything else ultimately grows. — Bernice M Murphy Dr

At its heart, Gothic Fiction is the introvert's "Hero's Journey" where heroes and heroines must navigate the uncharted territory of the mind in order to solve the mystery of their life's adventure. — Barrymore Tebbs

When she first saw him, she took him for a ghost. His jet-black hair fluttered in the breeze as he walked, letting her see his eyes. They seemed haunted, lost in some way. He was tall and gaunt, starkly pale in his black clothes. He was the very picture of Anton, even sharing his world-weary eyes of deepest blue. She could hardly look away from this apparition, an echo of all the memories and dreams that had haunted her these many years. — Amanda M. Lyons

The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men. — Ray Bradbury

Profanity is the expression of a lesser mind. — Shane K.P. O'Neill

Don't get all gothic and emo on me now. - Tory — Matthew Leeth

Inside, there was a bed, and upon the bed there was a woman. More beautiful was she even than the damask rose while her scent, drifting through the open window, was that of the night dew. Her hair was silken as the raven's wing. Quite naked, she lay, so still upon the bed, her eyes closed in reverie.

The young man looked first upon her breasts, where her hand rested. And upon each breast, there was a rosebud nipple. Upon each nipple there was a tip most tender. Upon each tip there was a milky drop.

Chin lifted, lips parted, she milked her maiden breast.

'What I would give to suckle at that teat,' thought he.

from 'Against Faithlessness' in Cautionary Tales — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. — Mary Shelley