Horror House Quotes & Sayings

It's like a haunted house we can't leave,' Neil said.
A haunted house we're afraid to leave, Tony thought. — Christopher Pike

I'm a fan of horrors. I love the ones that make you jump. My girlfriend hates it. I've been dating her for one-and-a-half years and I'm crazy about her, but she's terrified of horror films. Not the cute 'Will you hold me?' way, but she's weeping. With 'House of Wax,' we'll be sleeping and I'll go to the bathroom and she's sitting up waiting for me. — Jared Padalecki

Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois.
You don't get lost in the woods behind your house.
You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall. — Travis Thrasher

The scratching came from the attic. At night, when Rory turned out the light I would lie awake and wait for it to skit, skit, skit lightly across the floorboards above our heads and down behind the water pipes. — Kate Chisman

He couldn't imagine, couldn't imagine the horror of scrubbing your own father's blood out of the floor. Better to set the whole house on fire, better to leave and never come back."

pg 338 — Veronica Roth

Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came. It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then - nothingness, no visible thing at all! — H.G.Wells

Suddenly he stopped as if rooted outside the doors of one house; before his eyes an inexplicable phenomenon occurred: a carriage stopped at the entrance; the door opened; a gentleman in a uniform jumped out, hunching over, and ran up the stairs. What was Kovalev's horror as well as amazement when he recognized him as his own nose! — Nikolai Gogol

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! ... He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love ... He has carried me off for love! ... He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love! ... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps! ... And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty ... he offered it ... he offered to show me the mysterious road ... Only ... only he rose too ... and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice ... for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed! ... That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep. — Gaston Leroux

I turn away and stare through the window at the field where the scotch broom creeps yellow as hell toward my doorstep. Six years and it has advanced from the hinterlands to the picket fence in the back yard. Six more years and it will have chewed this house to the foundation, braided my bones in its hair. — Laird Barron

In March of 1915, all three of Lord and Lady Chetwynd-Pitt's sons'd been gassed, blown up or machine-gunned in the very same week at the battle of Neuve-Chapelle. All three. Imagine that: On Monday, you've got three sons, by Friday you've got none. Lady Albertina had just, y'know, caved in. Physically, mentally, spiritually, brutally. — David Mitchell

He lived in a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest — John Bellairs

There the book fell, and it seemed to Conway that an invisible hand had struck it out of his. He rose, leaving the journal lying open as it had fallen, and hurried from the room. A gloom filled the passage and the house was full of horror, resounding with the sufferings of its past inhabitants and dripping with their tears. His hand closed upon the damp balustrade, and the rotten wood exuded moisture like a sponge. A minute later the owner, but not the master, of the Strath was speeding through the garden, his being reaching out to find an affinity, as embryonic life must grope into the darkness for its promised soul. — Ernest G. Henham

If you don't have any money and you want to make a horror movie, take a six-inch wide brush for house painting and dip that in a bucket of blood, and then just flick your wrist. You'll get this great speckled splash of blood, and it will cost you nothing. — Bruce Campbell

I was ashamed. Okay? Ashamed. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"Yeah, well, you know what I am? I'm the stupid girl in the horror movie. You made me into that stupid girl. I'm the one running back into the house where the guy with the knife is. You warned me. Over and over again, you told me to stay away. But I couldn't listen. I thought I knew better — Erin Watt

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. — John Steinbeck

Momentarily, through one good eye, he could see the moon. Something below moved and he span around to where he could see the house. His family were in there. Alone. He could not protect them and he would not see them again. — Stephen Craig

Yet, despite all, it is a difficult thing to admit the existence of ghosts in a coldly factual world. One's very instincts rebel at the admission of such maddening possibility. For, once the initial step is made into the supernatural, there is no turning back, no knowing where the strange road leads except that it is quite unknown and quite terrible. ("Slaughter House") — Richard Matheson

Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week. Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend - but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation? — Chellie Pingree

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. — H.P. Lovecraft

But there's also the fact that in my experience most of my readers are first and foremost plain old-fashioned readers. Good readers. They're not looking for cozy brand-name output and that means I don't have to give it to 'em. They're not lazy and have little patience with pre-fab beach-bag books or Oprah's opine du jour. They're questers.
They know that every now and then you're gonna get lucky and pure gold like King and Straub's Black House will simply drop into your lap at the local supermarket but after that, if your bent is horror and suspense fiction, you're gonna have to get your hands dirty and root around for more. Find a Ramsey Campbell or an Edward Lee. They expect diversity and search it out. They want what all good readers want - to be taken somewhere in a book or a story that's really worth visiting for a while. Maybe even worth thinking about after.
If that place happens to scare the hell out of you all the better. — Jack Ketchum

The idea that the spirits of those once tortured in the house might still be there was the avenue his imagination began to explore. The groaning of the wood sounded like screams from the dungeon and the clunking pipes were the implements of torture. His bedcovers seemed to offer less protection than they had done in his younger years, he felt naked and at the mercy of his thoughts, and it wasn't long before the skull he'd seen in the cellar had a face, manifested by fear and imagination. — Matthew Williams

She cursed under her breath. Eddie watched the EBs react, the younger ones recoiling with silent gasps.
"Better watch your language. There are children present. I think you're freaking them out."
"Sure, I'm the one freaking them out. — Hunter Shea

There was a year between school and getting going as an actor when I basically just watched films. Video shops were the new thing, and there was a good one round the corner and me and my brother just watched everything, from the horror to the European art-house. — Aidan Gillen

The stinging slap against her cheek whipped her head sideways. Her hand reflexively went to her burning face.
"I told you no," Tobe said, barely above a whisper.
Daphne had no words. He'd never so much as hinted at touching her in anger before. She now understood what stunned speechless meant. — Hunter Shea

What I see as the particularly exciting prospect for writing horror fiction as we go forward is setting stories in more internal landscapes than external ones, mapping out the mind as the home for scary things instead of the house at the end of the lane or lakeside campground or abandoned amusement park. — Andrew Pyper

Do you realize that a middle-class couple, one archaeologist, one dolls' expert, can't move from their house because ancient spirits are blocking them in? It's a reasonable sort of day's experience, isn't it? — Robert Holdstock

Joey glanced at his alarm clock and saw it was just before midnight. His eyes drifted to his bookshelf. Lined up in a row, in the order of their publication, were all of the Spook Boys books, a series of kids' books about two adventurous brothers who were constantly getting into mischief as they explored haunted houses and spooky old castles, or tried to solve mysteries involving missing diamonds or stolen paintings. Joey envied the characters in those books - he wanted his own life to be made up of such exciting, implausible adventures. But maybe his imagination had gotten carried away. Maybe his mind, saturated with such fictional tales, was more than willing to play tricks on him when it came to houses like the one on Creep Street. — The Blood Brothers

The diamonds glinted under the glare of the chandelier and they looked like a thousand spider eyes — Kate Chisman

Honey, you worry too much. Nothing is going to happen, I mean come on, you're in the house of Mr. Hausefalle, the guru of home security! You're probably safer over there than here.- House Trap, ch. 4: A Grave Mistake. — Mike Mauthor

It was one thing to talk about ghosts, quite another to have them messing around with things in the physical world. — Hunter Shea

As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a thing more hideous than unreason itself. — Anonymous

Before they knew it, Ormsby Island would become a paranormal attraction like Waverly Hills or Houghton Mansion or the Whaley House. The place would be crawling with people anxious to catch a ghost on camera or audio. — Hunter Shea

Galton was a world renowned anthropologist back in the nineteenth century, though he was a big overshadowed by his cousin, Charles Darwin. — Hunter Shea

Even more than dying itself, I'm scared of the horror-movie changes that happen to the human body as it ages. I think of it as a sort of haunted-house effect, living inside a crumbling, creaking structure that is full of ghosts and will, some day, fall down. — Kate Christensen

The northern star changes its position every ten thousand years, but friendships can last for all eternity.
- RJPeters — R.J. Peters

Yeah, I get it. I'll be cool as a well digger's ass."
He jumped when the front door slammed shut, the harsh bang echoing around the trees.
Mitch shook his head. "That well digger must be working in a hot spring. — Hunter Shea

She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked - and then she would be afraid,
Even with a lamp, to go about the house
And lock the windows; and as night wore on
Toward morning, if a dog howled, or a mouse
Squeaked in the floor, long after it was gone
Her flesh would sit awry on her. By day
She would forget somewhat, and it would seem
A silly thing to go with just this dream
And get a neighbor to come at night and stay.
But it would strike her sometimes, making tea:
_She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for company._ — Edna St. Vincent Millay

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them. — Shirley Jackson

The life could be unique, incrediable, awesome, irreplaceable and gorgeous. Without "Easy-Peasy", by putting all people to solve puzzles for example. Somebody asks you a question like "Who is Janne WillDrog?" you answer like that "Never had a future, never went to library, never had a chance to be part of the White House. The White Costumed guy knows the answer!" - The find answer you must solve the riddle and to assemble the puzzle! — Deyth Banger

Every age brought its specific terror. As a boy, Felix had lain awake, afraid the house would burn down. As a youth, he'd dreaded bullies. Later, it was conscription into the army. Or the fear of not learning a trade. Or never finding a wife. After school, his career. After his son was born, he feared everything. His secret dream was to face down such a horror that it would leave him inoculated. He'd never suffer fear of anything, ever again. These — Chuck Palahniuk

Well, she asked, how do you gentlemen like living in a haunted house?
It's perfectly fine, Luke said, perfectly fine. It gives me an excuse to have a drink in the middle of the night. — Shirley Jackson

Which grave are we in?" she said.
"The oldest." She felt Eddie's puzzlement.
"That can't be possible. He looks like he was just buried."
"There must be something at work in the chemistry of the island that's preserving his body. It's like the incorruptibles, bodies that weren't preserved in any special way that don't decay. Catholic saints like Bernadette and Padre Pio are said not to have decomposed even though they died a long, long time ago. Environmental factors can cause a kind of mummification."
Jessica said, or thought, "This is bizarre. I'm getting a lesson on mummification while in the coffin of a dead man. — Hunter Shea

Things had gone badly at Hell House, although not quite as horribly as the '31 investigation. At least this time there were survivors, if you wanted to call being reduced to catatonia and raving lunacy 'surviving'. — Nancy A. Collins

I see the glow before I see her. The orange light is so strong it's hard to believe the house isn't on fire, but when feet appear at the top of the staircase, I can finally see that the light isn't coming from the house. It's coming from her.
My heart beats so fast I can't tell the pulses apart - it's one harsh thrum inside my head. If I'm a Smurf, this girl is an Oompa Loompa. No. Not even. It looks like she walked out of a horror movie. She really is on fire, burning from the inside out.
I'm staring, but I can't help it. Everyone would be staring if they could see what I see. — Erica Cameron

There's horror, lust and ecstasy on stage at the White Mouse
The Behrenstrasse's Babel, and Berlin's (second) wildest house!
There's love and pain a-plenty dressed in shiny leather boots
But whips and chains and naked hips are nothing when you see
With your own eyes,
This fantasy...
Oh oh, those Berliner Girls
They'll take you to another world. — Morgana Blackrose

She had been seized with a sudden existential horror. The house had white carpets and white furniture and, most significantly, no books. — Alexander McCall Smith

The fact was that the woman lived the life she chose, she was happy in that life and it was no one's business after all but her own, my uncle's face darkening with blood as he spoke, my mother's fair fine skin pink as if smarting yet still I persisted, for I thought it such a horror, such a grief, yes and an embarrassment too, I said, "She's made a prison of this house, it's like she's a nun, it must be to punish herself," and my mother said quietly, angrily, "You don't know - what do you know! People do what they want to do. — Joyce Carol Oates

Neither spoke, but lat silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.
At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock came so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.
The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house. — W.W. Jacobs

It's not nice to think of children growing up like mushrooms, in the dark. — Shirley Jackson

I have a horror of boring someone or, worse still, of someone boring me. I said to my mother when I was seven, 'But, Mums, if it was only my husband and me in the house together, what would we talk about?' I've never wanted to answer my own question, and doubt I'll bother now. — Celia Imrie

Welcome to the house of Gray and Graves where we never lie still and death is only the beginning ... — C.M. Stunich

Look at yourself, idiot. You reek like the slaughter-house. Plan your dastard's revenge as you like. But for those of us liking our company civilized, spare us the horror and bathe yourself first! — Janny Wurts

Alone is a much better film than House of the Dead and better than most horror movies out today. — Uwe Boll

Oh, come on, what's the matter with Romeo and Juliet?"
Megan took the movie from my grasp to put it in the DVD player.
"Do you want a list?" I didn't wait for an answer. "Romeo's whining about a girl one day, in love with Juliet the next. He has the decency to marry her but then they go back to her parent's house? I mean, what kind of asinine plan is that? Come on, their families hate each other! If you're going to sneak away and get married, just sneak away! It's like watching the girl in a horror movie walk up the dark attic stairs. She totally deserves whatever
she gets at the top."
"Are you saying they deserved to die? — Jolene Perry

I love horror comedies, and I love horror movies. In particular, I love horror movies from the '80s that have practical monsters in them. They're not just slasher movies with people going to kill people in people's houses. Although I do like 'The Last House on the Left,' and things like that, I do like these ridiculous monster movies. — Ken Marino

The air in the room was so cold, the exposed flesh of his face felt like ice. "I'll be the first person to get frostbite in a house sleeping several feet from a roaring fire. — Hunter Shea

Jessica's hand flew to her mouth. If she had any doubt, the next entry settled it.
She read on, cool beads of sweat trickling down the back of her neck, hardly daring to breathe as the black heart of Ormsby Island came closer and closer into focus. — Hunter Shea

And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water - things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other - forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. ("The House And The Brain") — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Unless it does turn out to be you, of course," Izzy adds. "Then I'll spit on your grave myself. Take you to the last house on the left just before dawn. — Stephen Graham Jones

When my next door neighbor says, "Nope, never seen a scorpion in my house!" is when things start feeling all Amityville Horror around here. — Jennifer Fulwiler

You could hear us?" Christiana asked with horror.
"I'm sure the whole house can hear you," she said dryly. "He roars like a lion, and you squeal like a stuck pig. — Lynsay Sands

Buried and burned. Never find them. Never. Buried and buried. — Hunter Shea

Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The door of the judge's house was opened to him by a huge, bearded man who informed the reporter in a conversational tone that if he did not leave the village immediately he would not leave it with his arms unbroken. — Phil Rickman

My father had a healthy disregard for social conventions: he once let me paint the house windows in rainbows with my watercolor set, to my mother's horror, and he'd clap for trees that he thought were doing a good job of exploding into red during the fall. — Jennifer DuBois

Shawn slowly climbed the old wooden stairs, listening to the low creak that sounded from his footsteps. He hoped the wood wouldn't collapse beneath him. But the stairs held strong and a moment later he joined his friend in the kitchen of the old house, a wave of suffocating humidity washing over them as they stepped deeper into its secrets. — Joe DeRouen

Sing a song of suspense in which the players die.
Four and twenty ravens in an Edgar Allan Pie.
When the pie was broken, the ravens couldn't sing.
Their throats had been sliced open by Stephen, the new King.
The King was in his writing house, stifling a laugh
While his queen was in a tizzy of her bloody Lovecraft.
When the dead maid got the garden for her rank as royal whore,
King's shovel made it double and he married nevermore. — Jessica McHugh

Horror Hotel, as wraith called Shade's house. Vampires, demons, and werewolves check in ... and then they make out, and- — Larissa Ione

I really liked it." She covers her mouth in horror.
"If I like sex, do you think it means I can't be a feminist?"
"No." I shake my head. "Because being a feminist
I think it means being in charge of your sexuality. You decide who you want to have sex with. It means not trading your sexuality for ... other things."
"Like marrying some gross guy who you're not in love with just so you can have a nice house with a picket fence."
"Or marrying a rich old geezer. Or a guy who expects you to cook him dinner every night and take care of the children," I say, thinking of Samantha.
"Or a guy who makes you have sex with him whenever he wants, even if you don't," Miranda concludes.
We look at each other in triumph, as if we've finally solved one of the world's great problems. — Candace Bushnell

That's definitely true! It was before my father died, so I can't attribute it to an obsession with death. When I was seven, I loved those old Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone. The Scarlet Claw was one of my faves. And I loved all the Halloween's and that film about the haunted house ... Burnt Offerings, with Oliver Reed. Every birthday party was a slumber party and we'd watch horror films. — Cate Blanchett

For that matter," said Toussaint, "it's true. We would be assassinated before we'd have time to say Boo!
And then, since Monsieur doesn't sleep in the house. But don't be afraid, mademoiselle, I fasten the windows like
Bastilles. Women alone ! I'm sure that's enough to make us shudder! Just imagine! To see men come into the room
at night and say Hush ! to you and set themselves about cutting your throat. It isn't so much the dying, people
die, that's all right, we know very well that we have to die, but it is the horror of having such people touch yhaving such people touch you. And then their knives, they must cut badly ! 0 God ! — Victor Hugo

In the dark behind the glare of the television, like a mannequin behind it, I could see a silhouette and it wasn't moving. It was maybe six foot high with its shoulders hunched and I blinked to make sure it was real. The TV fuzzed grey and white and black and I had a lump in my throat that I couldn't swallow away. "Rory" I whispered. Clawing out gently beneath the duvet cover, reaching for his hand. But I couldn't find it. And he didn't answer. — Kate Chisman

I can smell your blood now. I can smell it in every room of the house. — Jolie Du Pre

I have a new nickname for Dottie. She's now the Crazy Whisperer. — Hunter Shea

Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting. — Arthur Machen

I'm not your boyfriend!" I snapped, trying to gently move her hands away from my body.
"How can you say that?" Sara asked in horror.
"It's shockingly effortless," I replied. "My vocal chords vibrate, and my mouth and tongue articulate. I can even do it without thinking." I had to remind myself to stay calm, and sarcasm was the best way to do that.
"When are you going to give me a key to your house so I don't have to knock like some guest?" Sara asked, coming at me again.
I backed away. "How about never? Is never good for you?"
Sara, undeterred, said, "You're the reason I go to therapy on Fridays."
"The plot thickens!" Gabby exclaimed for comedic relief. — Laura Kreitzer

The chandelier was wearing on its rubber support and the crack at the side of the ceiling hold was getting bigger. "One day that's going to fall on us and spear you through the heart," he said. I turned to kiss him on the shoulder and closed my eyes. — Kate Chisman

She fished a gum wrapper and pen from her bag and wrote down her number. "I'd like to stay friends with you and Jason. That's my cell number. You can call me any time you want, except at two-thirty-six in the morning."
Alice cocked her head. "How come I can't call you at two-thirty-six/"
"I need that minute to sleep," Jessica said, smiling. — Hunter Shea

This whole goddamn house stinks of ghosts. — J.D. Salinger

As she walked to the stairway, he pulled her back with a light tug on her shoulder. "They're responding to you now."
Turning to face him, she said, "Responding to me? What did I say?"
"The hallway was full of them. When you said we were going downstairs to eat, they started filing down the stairs."
"They all took the stairs?"
Eddie nodded, his shining, gifted eyes watching the ghostly procession.
He said, "They don't want to be far from you, Jess. And I'm not entire sure it's well intentioned."
"Come to use," the voices whispered. — Hunter Shea

I'm not a horror movie guy, but I think the guy that did Saw, or maybe House or something, he was saying you love that age as a storyteller because a nineteen-year-old is still dumb enough to make really bad decisions, but he's allowed to be out on his own. — Craig Finn

You state here that you believe your daughter, Amy, is no longer with you; that the girl living in your house - who looks and sounds exactly like Amy - is not in fact your daughter. Is this correct? Is this still the case? — A. Ashley Straker

It's this place. Whatever darkness came to the island, it's here to stay. Stick around long enough and it gets inside your skin, into your cells, like an infection. — Hunter Shea

Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure. — Arthur Conan Doyle

On the revelation that there are no gods or afterlife:-

"I do not 'like' the truth any more than you Avil, or anyone. I wrestled with it for a long time, for a while I was distraught, desperate to find that my research had been wrong - the more I searched, the deeper I delved the more clear it became that the truth was what it is. After much reflection, I came to the conclusion that though accepting the truth is hard, moving on from that, it becomes clear that the important thing is to make the world we live in a better place. We get one life, it's our duty to make the most of it."

~Brael Truthseeker of House Krazic
Deathsworn Arc 2 : The Verkreath Horror — Martyn Stanley

I wish this knife was good for something besides death, that I could cut through time and walk into that house, into that kitchen where he trapped her, and get her out of there. I would make sure she had the future she should have had. — Kendare Blake

To me, the scariest movie ever made to this day is 'The Exorcist.' It still scares the living hell out of me, and it's because of the fantasy element. It's the exorcism. It's the Devil. It's not a guy breaking into your house trying to torture you or cut your whatever off. Those kinds of movies don't do it for me, and I don't call them horror. — Cassandra Peterson

The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-built, sprawling, resembling a hunting-lodge. But there's no friendliness to it. There is something ominous and forbidding about its look, so dark, so forgotten, so secretive-looking. The kind of a house that has a maw to swallow with - a one-way house, that you feel will never disgorge any living thing that enters it. Leprous in the moonlight festering on its roof. And the two round sworls of light played by the heads of the car against its side, intersecting, form a pear-shaped oval that resembles a gleaming skull. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

In my poetry a rhyme
Would seem to me almost insolent.
Inside me contend
Delight at the apple tree in blossom
And horror at the house-painter's speeches.
But only the second
Drives me to my desk. — Bertolt Brecht

Truth was the last thing on my mind, and even if there was such a thing, I didn't want it in my house. Oedipus went looking for the truth and when he found it, it ruined him. It was a cruel horror of a joke. So much for the truth. I was gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth and what you heard depended on which side you were standing. If I ever did stumble on any truth, I was gonna sit on it and keep it down. — Bob Dylan

Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you've never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you've got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Come in." The kid turned and walked toward the house. "I'll help you if I can." He paused, his brown eyes turned toward Stacy who now stood open-mouthed. "But you'll have to do something for me in return."
I frowned. "Like what?"
"Hide me from my mother," he said. His eyes were shiny with fresh tears.
I snorted. "Do you mean your mother, the beauty queen?"
"No," he said softly. His face suddenly seemed older. "I mean my mother, the monster. — K.D. Wood

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat
patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well
the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell."
Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot
death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings
a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater. — Arundhati Roy

When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house. — Michael Barrett

I'm leaving." Her cold lips barely moved as she mouthed the words.
Horror fisted around his vitals. "No."
For the first time she met his eyes. Hers were red-rimmed but dry. "I have to leave,
Simon."
"No." He was a little boy denied a sweet. He felt like falling down and screaming.
"Let me go."
"I can't let you go." He half laughed here in the too-bright, cold London sun before his own
house. "I'll die if I do."
She closed her eyes. "No, you won't. I can't stay and watch you tear yourself apart."
"Lucy."
"Let me go, Simon. Please." She opened her eyes, and he saw infinite pain in her gaze.
Had he done this to his angel? Oh, God. He unclasped his hands. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I was looking into a darkened hallway, lined with a washing machine and dryer, and a few brooms and mops held in clamps on the wall. I put a hand on the doorknob and turned very slowly and quietly. It was unlocked. I took a deep breath - - and very nearly fell out of my skin as a horrible, shattering scream came from inside. It was the sound of anguish and horror and such a clear call for help that even Disinterested Dexter moved reflexively forward, and I had one foot actually inside the house when a tiny little question mark scuttled across the floor of my brain and I thought, I've heard that scream before. And as my second foot moved forward, farther into the house, I thought, Really? Where? The answer came quite quickly, which was comforting: it was the same scream that was on the "New Miami" videos that Weiss had made. - which meant that it was a recorded scream. - which meant it was intended to lure me inside. - which meant that Weiss was ready and waiting for me. — Jeff Lindsay

These were the things we would never notice were missing. — Kate Chisman

Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time, exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. ("Horror: A True Tale") — John Berwick Harwood

What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson's corridors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Myst-like discoveries thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? Or better yet: what is exciting? While the degree varies, we are always excited by anything that engages us, influences us or more simply involves us. In those endlessly repetitive hallways and stairs, there is nothing for us to connect with. That permanently foreign place does not excite us. It bores us. And that is that, except for the fact that there is no such thing as boredom. Boredom is really a psychic defense protecting us from ourselves, from complete paralysis, by repressing, among other things, the meaning of that place, which in this case is and always has been horror. — Mark Z. Danielewski