Horror Authors

"Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen; author of some dozen tales long and short, in which the elements of hidden horror and brooding fright attain an almost incomparable substance and realistic acuteness. Mr. Machen, a general man of letters and master of an exquisitely lyrical and expressive prose style, has perhaps put more conscious effort into his picaresque Chronicles Of Clemendy, his refreshing essays, his vivid autobiographical volumes, his fresh and spirited translations, and above all his memorable epic of the sensitive æsthetic mind, The Hill Of Dreams, in which the youthful hero responds to the magic of that ancient Welsh environment which is the author's own, and lives a dream-life in the Roman city of Isca Silurum, now shrunk to the relic-strown village of Cærleon-on-Usk. But the fact remains that his powerful horror-material of the nineties and earlier nineteen-hundreds stands alone in its class, and marks a distinct epoch in the history of this literary form."

"The worms, They crept in, and the worms, They crept out, And sported his eyes and his temples about, While the Spectre addressed Imogine."

"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise. Why sleep the ministers of truth and law? Has the state no controul, no decent awe, While each with each in madd'ning orgies vie Pandars to lust and licens'd blasphemy? Can senates hear without a kindred rage? Oh may a poet's lightning blast the page, Nor with the bolt of Nemesis in vain Supply the laws, that wake not to restrain!"

"All hail, M. P.! from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command "grim women" throng in crowds, And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds, With "small gray men," "wild yagers," and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott; Again all hail! if tales like thine may please, St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease; Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell, And in thy skull discern a deeper hell."

"Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogine said, "Offensive to Love and to me! For if ye be living, or if ye be dead, I swear by the Virgin, that none in your stead Shall Husband of Imogine be."

"Farewel, thou cruel world! – to morrow No more thy scorn my heart shall tear: – The grave will shield the child of sorrow, And heaven will hear the orphan's prayer."

"Hark! hark! – What mean those yells – those cries? His chain some furious madman breaks! He comes! I see his glaring eyes! Now! now! my dungeon bars he shakes. Help! Help! He's gone! Oh! fearful woe, Such screams to hear – such sights to see! My brain! my brain! – I know, I know I am not mad, but soon shall be."

"A Warrior so bold, and a Virgin so bright Conversed, as They sat on the green: They gazed on each other with tender delight; Alonzo the Brave was the name of the Knight, The Maid's was the Fair Imogine."

"He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghost-stories and German romances."

"Matthew Lewis [was] the genre's first punk, the Johnny Rotten of the Gothic novel."

"An Author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an Animal whom every body is privileged to attack; For though All are not able to write Books, all conceive themselves able to judge them."

"Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study."

"The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."

"How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there."

"There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down."

"There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it."

"He has attained supremacy in one particular line: he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer."

"There are some authors one wished one had never read in order to have the joy of reading them for the first time. For me, M. R. James is one of these."

"Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it."

"At the opposite pole of genius from Lord Dunsany, and gifted with an almost diabolic power of calling horror by gentle steps from the midst of prosaic daily life, is the scholarly Montague Rhodes James, Provost of Eton College, antiquary of note, and recognised authority on mediæval manuscripts and cathedral history. Dr. James, long fond of telling spectral tales at Christmastide, has become by slow degrees a literary weird fictionist of the very first rank; and has developed a distinctive style and method likely to serve as models for an enduring line of disciples."

"Sly humorous vignettes and bits of lifelike genre portraiture and characterisation are often to be found in Dr. James's narratives, and serve in his skilled hands to augment the general effect rather than to spoil it, as the same qualities would tend to do with a lesser craftsman. In inventing a new type of ghost, he has departed considerably from the conventional Gothic tradition; for where the older stock ghosts were pale and stately, and apprehended chiefly through the sense of sight, the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy—a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man—and usually touched before it is seen."

"A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!""

"I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again."

"James is regularly cited as a – or the – founder of the ‘tradition’ of English ghost stories. It is commonplace to then wryly point out that James’s ghosts are in fact often not ghosts, but inhuman ‘demons’ of one sort or another."

"There was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning…He looked as if he was wet all over: and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive."

"Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James. I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm frightened of them. They don't come any scarier than in these superb examples of the classic English ghost story."

"By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged."

"Life’s like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning."

"The best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren’t necessary."

"If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are."

"“The thing is,” Coyote says, “nothing’s as easy as we’d like it to be.” “Don’t I know it,” I mutter, but he’s not even listening to me. “And the real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.”"

"Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?"

"“Compromise is necessary,” Max agreed, “so long as you never give up who you are. That isn’t compromise; that’s spiritual death. You have to remain true to yourself.”"

"Nothing’s different, but everything has changed."

"A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what’s real and what’s not and most of us have been going along with it ever since."

"Only fools think they’re wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can."

"You can talk all you want about consensual reality, Jilly, but that doesn’t change the fact that some things are real and some things aren’t. There’s a line drawn between the two that separates reality from fantasy."

"“You’re confusing me.” “But not deliberately so,” Coyote says. “Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.”"

"That dichotomy between who she was and who she thought she should be was what really killed her."

"When you’re invisible, no one can see that you’re different."

"You’re not a nun, are you? You haven’t taken one of those absurd vows that cut you off from what otherwise might be a full and healthy human existence?"

"That was the trouble with not paying attention to money. It was never there when you needed it."

"Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn."

"What I’ve got to talk about, I don’t think a priest wants to hear. What does a priest know or care about secular concerns? All they want to talk about is God. All they want to hear is a tidy list of sins so that they can prescribe their penances and get on to the next customer."

"The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it’s really a wheel."

"There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back."

"As far as I’m concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary."

"There are three kinds of kids: the ones that are the odd birds, the ones that pissed on them, and the ones that watched it happen."

"“Often,” he says, “what we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves.”"

"I had the same questions for Superman as I did for God: If he was so powerful, why didn’t he deal with some real problems? Why didn’t he stop wars, feed the starving in Ethiopia, cure cancer? At least God had the Church to do His PR work for Him — if you can buy their reasoning, they have any number of explanations ranging from how the troubles of this life build character to that inarguable catchall, “God’s will.” And the crap in this life sure makes heaven look good. When I was growing up, the writers and artists of Superman never even tried to deal with the problem. And since they didn’t, I could only see Superman as a monster, not a hero. I couldn’t believe his battles with criminals, superpowered geniuses and the like. I never believed in God either."