Quotes from Richard Matheson

In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last.

Does a man's existence change in any way when he removes his overcoat? Neither does it change when death removes the overcoat of his body. He's still the same person. No wiser. No happier. No better off. Exactly the same. "Death is merely continuation at another level.

Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible.

But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician?

She sounded angry. That was the way she'd been as long as he'd known her. If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She seemed to regard it as a personal affront.

Even though they fought, their fighting never turned them against each other. It always ended with them embracing and kissing, smiling, laughing.

The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on himself.

Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from The Conqueror)

Staring down at the brook, I remembered a stream near Mammoth Lake. We'd parked the camper just above it and, all night, listened to it splashing across rocks and stones; a lovely sound.

The cross. He held one in his hand, gold and shiny in the morning sun. This, too, drove the vampires away. Why? Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?

The death of someone with whom a person has been long and closely associated leaves a literal vacuum in that person's life

Miniture protoplasm, the dirty little bastard!

People on earth are never alone," he explained. "There's always someone as a guide for each individual.

She felt all right. Her heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly, slowly beaten. Her hands and feet were numb, not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine imbedded in swaths of woolly packing. She felt all right.

In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

The day the library was shut down, he thought, some maiden librarian had moved down the room, pushing each chair against its table. Carefully, with a plodding precision that was the cachet of herself.

And suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.

Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?

It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor.

What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross? The

What dreams you white-frocked kiddies have in the sanctified cloister of your laboratories. You can make yourself believe anything after a while. As long as you can make up a measurement for it.

This, he knew, was courage, the truest, ultimate courage, because there was no one here to sympathize or praise him for it. What he felt was felt without the hope of commendation.

No sabía cuánto tiempo había pasado allí. Al fin, pensó, aun el dolor más profundo se aplaca, la desesperación más intensa se desvanece. La maldición del verdugo: la víctima se acostumbra al látigo.