Quotes from Clive Barker

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

And to think, she'd once had the hots for him, back in the old days (six months ago) when razor-thin men with noses like Durante and an encyclopaedic knowledge of de Niro movies had really been her style. Now she saw him for what he was, flotsam from a lost ship of hope. Still a pill-freak, still a theoretical bisexual, still devoted to early Polanski movies and symbolic pacifism.

Despite his intent, tears sprang to his eyes, and he went into her embrace, both of them sobbing freely, like enemies joined by a common loss or lovers about to be parted. Or else souls who could not remember whether they were lovers or enemies and were weeping at their own confusion.

Stories had a way of doing that, in Grillo's experience. It was his belief that nothing, but nothing, could stay secret, however powerful the forces with interests vested in silence. Conspirators might conspire and thugs attempt to gag but the truth, or an approximation of same, would show itself sooner or later, very often in the unlikeliest form. It was seldom hard facts that revealed the life behind the life. It was rumour, graffiti, strip cartoons and love songs.

I swear, the bigger the bully, the smaller the dick.

You could sometimes guide people's opinions, but if they didn't want to buy what you had to sell you could shout yourself hoarse trying to make them do it and it would never work.

Sometimes, of course, the war required that he be cruel, but what cause worth fighting for did not require cruelty of its champions once in a while?

There was no harm done; and what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?

Your kind has a superstitious terror of things ugly and broken; you fear that their condition may somehow infect you.

All the great powers in the world are blood-suckers and soul-stealers at heart.

You're being watched too, remember?" "I wasn't aware—" "That some of the screens you're looking at are looking at you?" "Yes." "Well, they are.

To every hour, its mystery. At dawn, the riddles of life and light. At noon, the conundrums of solidity. At three, in the hum and heat of the day, a phantom moon, already high. At dusk, memory. And at midnight? Oh, then the enigma of time itself; of a day that will never come again passing into history while we sleep.

Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political.

You're damned if you can't forgive, Jude.

Putting down the devil was the Lord's own sport.

The World-Soul is sick, Harry, crazy-sick. And if we don't each do our part and try to get to the root of its pain and burn it out, then everything is for nothing.

Her streak of independence, which had first brought her to this unfriendly city, was in studied defiance of her smothering appetite for security. If she gave in to those loving appeals she knew she would take root in domestic soil and not look up and out again for another year. In which time, what adventures might have passed her by?

Sometimes you need to let things strike your heart and not your head.

Nothing's perfect... because time passes... and the beetle and the worm find their way into everything sooner or later.

In my Art I have but one fear: that we will fail to be fearless.

Make your own worlds. Make your own laws. Make your own creations, your own star systems. Don't feel answerable to anyone, or as though you have to create after some preordained model. You don't have to write like myself, or King or Anne Rice: be yourself. Nothing is more wonderful than discovering a new voice, particularly if it happens to be your own.

War is but a continuation of diplomacy by alternate means.

Meaning is always a latecomer. Beauty and music seduce us first; later ashamed of our own sensuality, we insist on meaning.

You opened their eyes to another world, darling. They'll never forgive you for that.