Horror Authors

"As some are drawn to bars and others to churches, I’m drawn to bookstores and libraries. They’re sanctuaries. They’re sanctuary. Hope germinates in me that osmosis will take place and whatever goodness is in those books that got them a place on those shelves will leak into me and I’ll produce something that could someday go there."

"I hate it here. Everything's so—' She searches for a word that will tell Mama how violent it always is or how much she hates having to hide in the closet every time it even looks like gangbangers might roll through...--"

"I have intentionally killed off a few people in my books, bullies who made life miserable for me in my schooldays and early teens when I couldn’t fight back. I have no plans to kill off any more – they are all dead now within my pages! However, I have a particular dislike of extremism. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, right or wrong. When anybody tries to shove their opinion down my throat as though their beliefs are gospel, it makes me angry."

"I like to meet as many fans as possible. A number of them have become personal friends. Without the convention I would never see them. I owe a lot to my fans, many of whom have bought my books and remained faithful to me over the years. So I like to put on an enjoyable day for all and I plan to continue with it for as long as possible."

"The seed of the story [Rebecca] lay in du Maurier’s jealousy of Jan Ricardo, the first fiancée of her husband. "I know that she came across one or two letters or cards, fairly sort of harmless things, where Jan did sign 'Jan Ricardo' with this wonderful great R," says Browning, flourishing his hand in the air. It is a portentous curlicue that is emulated in the book."

"[As a child] I was always pretending to be someone else … historical characters, all those I invented for myself. I act even to this day. It's the old imagination working, a kind of make believe."

"The Menace, in movie language, and especially among women, means a heart-throb, a lover, someone with wide shoulders and no hips. A Menace does not have long lashes or a profile; he is always ugly, generally with a crooked nose and if possible a scar; his voice is deep; and he does not say much. When he does speak, the scriptwriters give him short, terse snaps of dialogue, phrases like ‘Lady, take care!’, or ‘Break it up!’, or even just ‘Maybe’. The expression on the ugly face has to be dead-pan and give nothing away, so that sudden death or a woman’s passion leaves it unmoved."

"My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all."

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

"There were no dark trees here, no tangled undergrowth, but on either side of the narrow path stood azaleas and rhododendrons, not blood-coloured like the giants in the drive, but salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace, drooping their lovely, delicate heads in the soft summer rain.The air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as though their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dank rich moss beneath our feet. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little stream, and the quiet rain."

"I write about the black experience, because it's what I know. But I'm always talking about the human condition, what human beings feel and how we feel. Given these circumstances, a human being will react this way: he'll be happy, will weep, will celebrate, will fall. So my books are popular in Asia, in Africa, in Europe. Why would I, a black girl in the South, fall in love with Tolstoy or Dickens? I was Danton and Madame Defarge and all those people in A Tale of Two Cities. I was Daphne du Maurier and the Brontë sisters in a town where blacks were not allowed to cross the street. I was educated by those writers. Not about themselves and their people, but about me, what I could hope for."

"We press the enemy backward with memories, with the power of history, with scenes of sense and order."

"Some remnant of battle must remain, something halting an advance. The ghost of a ghost may be more than a memory. It may be a piece of history that refuses to be rewritten."

"The message says that, unless it is stopped right now, it all begins again; the old hatreds, the ego rampant, the fists raised proclaiming that one or another god grants the right to yell instead of think. The message says that each time the world forgets how Evil exists, Evil gets a resurrection; and the word “honor,” extinguishing, turns to smoke. But there once lived men who knew that some things were worth dying for. There once were women who fought for their own, and fought for others as much as they were able. In a geriatric ward a body is no big advantage, anyway, and so this is how it shapes: we can’t form the future but we can show responsibility."

"We have the power of memory. We have the memory of order, and we still have voices. When memory dies, civilization dies."

"I lay in darkness admitting even I had managed to conceal truth beneath a pile of crap. For old men, Hell comes in two versions, lesser and greater. The lesser version happens when history is rewritten, their records expunged, no credit given for ideals or aspirations, nothing bequeathed, all tales revised as the Present, turning, points to a false record and accuses the past for Present suffering. That’s a stern Hell, but the greater version is worse. Hell for old men arrives at that exact moment when we must admit we can no longer protect our kids, our families, our country, the shards and remnants of our love."

"“Flags are symbols. Words are symbols. Steeples are symbols. Red lights in front of cathouses are symbols. The world don’t know it, but the world lives by symbols, some good, some as bad as flags.”"

"The fires of history burn hot and long, but memories of fires do not burn long enough."

"“I almost don’t believe in ghosts.” She was stating part of the problem. If ghosts are a metaphor for history, then belief is a leap into reality. If history is a metaphor for ghosts, matters get really serious."

"The crotch and the brain are the engines of history."

"The whole business lay ringed with mystery, with improbabilities, but also with certainty of total destruction if we failed. There might be total destruction if we succeeded, but that was someone else’s problem. We could only set the standard, write our last will and testament through action, and hope someone could still read deeply enough to raise arms against the encroaching night."

"Humans, being creative, can rewrite anything. ...which is a coy way of suggesting that each young generation invents history according to its own bigotries. The rewritten history gets quoted to show that one or another special group has perpetually saved civilization while suffering abuse known only to holy saints. The justification for historians is the same as the justification for janitors. Both sweep up the mess when the public gets done trashing."

"I watched the flickers, thought of modern times, and it came to me that we’ve never stopped fighting. When our wars ceased, a rearguard action began. We fought against deterioration of order; and lost as an old culture died and society went crazy at the funeral. Yammer got crowned King, with chatter its Queen."

"I needed this the way guys in trenches need head lice."

"No one recalls the names of dog soldiers who fought beside Leonidas at Thermopylae, or with Charles Martel at the battle of Tours; but how they fought, and what they fought for, lives through centuries. Without those forgotten men western civilization could not have come into being. They put it all on the line, because there are times in history when universal evil crawls from its cave of darkness. When those battles happened, though, what did anyone know? The dog soldier only knew that some fool Persian had it in his head to whip the world, or a Moorish chieftain was on the prod. And the dog soldier stood. He stood between the enemy and home, standing before a way of life that was particularly his. If in his home he was boss during peace, then during war he paid for the honor. The male of the species defends his land and home. It will always be that way. At least that is true of the Infantry."

"“The rules would seem to indicate,” I told him, “that if you start a war you really can’t complain when people drop bombs on you.”"

"So what use are we? Burnside hopes to die exhausted in a cathouse, with the sweet-sweet taste of bourbon on his tongue. My own ambition is less raunchy. I want, at age ninety, to be gunned down while storming the Congress."

"You can only picture the future based on what you know about the past. If history dies the future can only be hideous."

"Absolute Evil exists. As kids we geriatrics learned all about it, and no damn social worker had better come along and blame “evil” on “conditions.” Evil is a force in the universe, a force using any weakness it finds to do its dirt; and with Evil, Hell is just a sideline."

"Either ghosts are a metaphor for history, or history is a metaphor for ghosts."

"Evil uses Hell as a parking lot, and you don’t have to die to park. Evil sets people in the middle of war, famine, excess prosperity, or other of Hell’s appurtenances, then stands back as people freeze or sizzle; and screw themselves. The main interest of Evil is destruction of faith in gods and ethics, knowledge and honor. When faith is destroyed people create their own hells, and a sign stretches across the universe writ large for all to see. It reads: The Future Is Canceled."

"I now knew what it was, but just because you can name a thing does not mean you understand it."

"I saw old-fashioned cities, quiet streets, small shops, colorful flags and ornaments and decorations—life before machine guns, before communism and capitalism and the ambitions of generals."

"The world was changing, and it wouldn’t change back."

"Snowy owls come floating in from northward, while folks go to church on Sunday against the time when there’s some better amusement. Men hang around town, because home is either empty or crowded, depending on if you’re married. Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not."

"It’s no big job to fool yourself."

"All the mysteries of the world seem normal after dark. If imagination shows dead thumbs aching for a ride, those dead folk only prove the hot and spermy goodness of life."

"On top of the war talk, women were driving me crazy: the ones who said “no” and the ones who said “yes.” It got downright mystifying just trying to figure out which was worse. At nineteen, it’s hard to know how to act."

"Never confuse an idiot."

"Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise."

"Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness."

"A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion, pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is, hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying, they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living, he never gave dying any thought."

"The reason to understand history is not to avoid the mistakes of history—because some fool will make those mistakes for you. Some maniac will start a war, and some other maniac will drop an atom bomb, and you'll be the poor bastard who gets to drop the bomb or be hit by it. No, you understand history so you can understand yourself."

"Courage, combined with stupidity, does not make successful soldiers."

"They will return, these Gods you have never stopped longing for. Time will bring back the order of ancient days."

"The Cantal of Auvergne corresponds to the Cantal of the Himalayas. The Merovingians are Indians or Persians or Trojans . . . . Is it not highly important to clarify these relationships, migrations and filiations, at least with somewhat more care and research than has been devoted to them so far?"

"He thought about spiders, twisting thread into beautiful symmetry, taming chaos with ordered nets that greeted the dawn, hung with globes of dew that caught and held cores of sunlight, and tiny images of the world."

"“I should have killed or confused you when I had the chance. You are destruction. You are corrosion. You are death to order. Family, cast him out before he infects the rest of us as he has these.” “You may speak in your own defense, Tom,” said Aunt Agatha. “She’s right, though; I embody those things.” He held out his hands, open. “I bring you change.”"

"Any established power system grows decadent over time, if there is nothing with the strength or motivation to challenge it, and if it refuses to challenge itself."

"Never rush into anything—unless into is the direction you want to go."