Quotes from Robert Bloch

Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed.

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.

A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, a wise man tells her that her mouth looks extremely beautiful when her lips are closed.

You hate people. Because, really, you're afraid of them, aren't you? Always have been, ever since you were a little tyke. Rather snuggle up in a chair under the lamp and read. You did it thirty years ago, and you're still doing it now. Hiding away under the covers of a book.

It's all right, he said, wondering at the same time why there were no better words, why there never are any better words to answer fear and grief and loneliness. It's all right, believe me.

Talk about not knowing other people—why, when you came right down to it, you didn't even know yourself!

Lila closed her mouth, but the scream continued. It was the insane scream of an hysterical woman, and it came from the throat of Norman Bates.

The light shone down on his plump face, reflected from his rimless glasses, bathed the pinkness of his scalp beneath the thinning sandy hair as he bent his head to resume reading.

Norman stirred, turned, and then fell into a darkness deeper and more engulfing than the swamp.

Looking back, looking back and trying to figure what made you that way, several things stand out in your mind. There may have been more than several. Maybe there were a hundred. Maybe a thousand. Small events, little episodes, all pointing you in the same direction, so that you might think you had free will when you wobbled from side to side on the track, but there were no switches for you to throw, no turnings to choose.

It was really a fascinating book—no wonder he hadn't noticed how fast the time had passed.

She'd thrown something at the mirror, and then the mirror broke into a thousand pieces and she knew that wasn't all; she was breaking into a thousand pieces, too.

He pressed a switch and the bedside lamp blossomed and sent forth yellow petals of light.

Mother would be in real trouble right now.

Strange how everyone tried to disguise truth with nonsense. Like the slang for death: kicking the bucket, wiped out, snuffed, wasted, blown away. The light touch to dispel the heavy fear.

All at once that was the most important thing—to get out of the dark.

The thought came creeping, just as the numbness came creeping, stealing over his senses, softly, smoothly, there in the silken silence.

But first he was going to take a drink, a big drink, because he needed one. And it didn't matter whether he drank or not, nothing mattered now; it was all over. All over, or just beginning.

Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...

Sam, what do you think happened?

And then, as he ripped back the shower curtains and stared down at the hacked and twisted thing sprawled on the floor of the stall, he realized that Mother had used her keys.

Norman took another drink, just a sip. He could feel the wetness trickle down the side of his chin. He must be drunk. All right, he was drunk, what did it matter? As long as Mother didn't know. As long as the girl didn't know. It would all be a big secret. Impotent, was he? Well, that didn't mean he couldn't see her again.

We're all not quite as sane as we pretend to be." Sam