Horror Authors Authors Quotes & Sayings

No one will ever write a horror novel as scary as reading about my symptoms on WebMD. — John Raptor

She really needed to stop reading romantic suspense because now horror stories from authors like Shiloh Walker were on her mind and a little too vivid for what she needed at the moment. — Carrie Ann Ryan

I've been told by a few people at conferences I have a rather academic approach to the subject matter that makes it easy for people to ask questions. I think some genre writers feel the need to "sell" or defend what they do, and so when a door opens to discuss their genre, regardless of what that genre is, they tend to get almost pushy. I'm comfortable with what I write. It is part of who I am. I don't really need to sell it. But if I'm asked, I'll explain it. — Julie Ann Dawson

The two of them had discovered it was all right to open the closets ... as long as you didn't poke too far back in them. Because things might still be lurking there, ready to bite. — Stephen King

I don't remember ever signing up for weird. It just sort of happened. — Justin Alcala

Sometimes good people do bad things. — Andrew Gilmore

The saga of semen stained sheets continues. — Kristy Berridge

The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels. — Mylo Carbia

In a way, Darius brings the vampire back to a more classical interpretation. A modern day Dracula who is charming, sensual, and completely monstrous. There is no pretense of humanity with him. He considers himself a member of a species that is the true apex predator of the world, feeding on humans and using them as puppets for their own bizarre games. He's not struggling with any inner angst. Most humans are either food, entertainment, or useful tools to him. Sometimes all three. He finds the modern popular interpretation of vampires both amusing and useful for his own agenda. — Julie Ann Dawson

We stopped looking in the shadows, when we realised that WE were the monsters that we are afraid of. I want to take these monsters, give them a voice and put them back under our beds, in our closets and in the shadows, back where we are most afraid of them. — Rob Shepherd

In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die - die sweetly die - into mine. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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

Some things you cannot see or explain, but they are there, lurking.
Some things dwell in the dark: waiting ... watching ... haunting.
Sometimes evil takes on many forms, many faces.
And silence is the last thing you hear, when it's already too late.
THE SILENCE — Barry Brickey

Back in the 1800's, Ormsby Island was one of South Carolina's crown jewels. The island was owned by Maxwell Ormsby, a very wealthy man who liked to entertain everyone from heads of state to artists and authors and anyone who knew how to make money in business. An invitation to the island was a declaration that you were someone on the move. Once a year, Ormsby opened the island up to the public and hosted a huge fair. It was the social event of the year in these parts. My family still talks about the days when my great grandmother would take the family out to enjoy the festivities. It must have been some party. — Hunter Shea

Even the contemporary horror authors who have seriously influenced me are a disparate bunch. — George Stephen

Wolves and those who see them are shot on sight. — Peter Straub

Writing is a lonely act. When two writers come together to write a horror story it can be crazy. You can't step on a mine and hope it doesn't explode. — Ben Oliveira

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things.
Until it was no more.
Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone.
The birth of a city ... It had become the death of a world. — Charles Beaumont

Sometimes its the crazy side that accomplishes things! — Christopher J. Fennell

The stink of rot and ruin, of old dreams, broken screams, and wicked, dirty little things. — Damien Angelica Walters

Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that's appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider. — Christopher Rice

Everything is About To Change. — Chris Mentillo

As has already been noted, fantastic literature developed at precisely the moment when genuine belief in the supernatural was on the wane, and when the sources provided by folklore could safely be used as literary material. It is almost a necessity, for the writer as well as for the reader of fantastic literature, that he or she should not believe in the literal truth of the beings and objects described, although the preferred mode of literary expression is a naive realism. Authors of fantastic literature are, with a few exceptions, not out to convert, but to set down a narrative story endowed with the consistency and conviction of inner reality only during the time of the reading: a game, sometimes a highly serious game, with anxiety and fright, horror and terror. — Franz Rottensteiner

My mistake was that I didn't kill you. — Kayla Krantz

My original intent was to write a horror story about someone who loses his mind and slowly begins to unravel. The story, as I envisioned it, would evoke horror within the context of psychological decay, entropy. — Jupiter Cutter

I think horror can and should be classy. I enjoy seeing it raised up not lowered down to the lowest common denominator.
There's prejudice against the horror genre and I think sometimes that's the fault of the authors involved. — Carole Gill

Horror is the only genre where you don't have to explain everything. Things happen just because and that alone makes it scary. — R.A. Horn

As soon as Todd drove off the motorway it vanished from the mirror, and so did the sun across the moor. — Ramsey Campbell

Did I never tell you Sassicaia makes me horny? — Steve Emmett

Horror writers shouldn't play nice. Disturb & unnerve your reader. Make them uncomfortable, but not so much they stop reading. — Pamela Morris

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different style. — R.L. Stine

In junior high I read a lot of Stephen King, whose Americana approach to writing was often about "the terror next door" and at the same time I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, who was on the other end of the horror pendulum: insidious and disturbingly psychological. I found it fascinating how these two authors came at horror from two totally different perspectives. — Bryan Fuller

Some Murders Shouldn't Be Investigated. — Thomas Amo

SHIT, WAS THAT A BIT OF EYEBALL STUCK IN MY CLEAVAGE? — Kristy Berridge

The corridor didn't seem long enough to contain so much blackness.

'Passing Through Peacehaven — Ramsey Campbell

Life is a journey, not a destination. (Unk) — G. Bernard Ray

If you work in The Dark, you MUST live in The Light. — Mylo Carbia

Sulphurous wind gusted in his wake; the dust of the street swirled and the folds of his black coat flapped against his thin body. — A.F. Stewart

As the helpless vampire watched the transformation, it started screaming. It was still screaming when his rows of razor sharp teeth sank into its throat. — Alan Kinross

[Lord Horror] was so unique and radical, I expected to go to prison for it. I always thought that if you wrote a truly dangerous book -- something dangerous would happen to you. Which is one reason there are so few really dangerous books around. Publishers play at promoting dangerous books, whether they're Serpent's Tail or Penguin. All you get is a book vetted by committee, never anything radically imaginative or offensive that will take your fucking head off. Ironically, I think it would do other authors a power of good if they had to account for their books by going to prison -- there are far too many bad books being published! — David Britton

You name drop authors like other girls drop boy bands. — Danielle Paige

grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel. And it's going to freak you out. If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein. You have been warned. — Blake Crouch

I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills from my lips in frothy discomposure. It splatters the pavement like a spray of blood. — Rebecca Clare Smith

When he shut himself in his apartment he found that he hoped he was waiting for nothing at all. — Ramsey Campbell

Which is the true nightmare, the horrific dream that you have in your sleep or the dissatisfied reality that awaits you when you awake? — Justin Alcala

Remember that if I were born of the underworld, you were born of flowers. You are the blood the forest feeds upon, and it is you who gave the woods their dark magic. Time doesn't exist, and in another world I never left you. I've transformed your wounds into a scepter for a queen. The nightcatcher may think that she's had her victory - but your veins are buried in the map of the earth and she can never have you. She thinks she can own the universe because she's enslaved gods and eaten stars, but she couldn't even kill me, living here in her tunnels, because you protected me with your love. — Autumn Christian

No amount of therapy can replace the joy of revenge writing. — Mylo Carbia

I tell everyone who asks me about writing ... almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough! — Brooklyn Hudson

You hold in your hands a very special book. It contains one hundred carnival rides of terror. You must remember: horror can come from any direction. It can be as subtle as a spider web's caress, or as vicious as the drop of an axe blade. It can be grim as the reaper, or as sardonic as, well, Sardonicous. It can wear the garments of science or superstition; can be dressed in the trappings of fantasy or the fancy-free. But always it will terrify. And one of the bluntest of its instruments is the short-short story, one of the most difficult of literary devices to master. Not only must each word be perfect-but each comma and period. Nothing can be wasted. In the hands of master executioners, like the authors who fill this book-it can be deadly. So... Die-and die again- one hundred times... — Martin H. Greenberg