Quotes from Richard Matheson

It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second. Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.

I'm an animal! he exulted. I'm a dumb, stupid animal and I'm going to drink!

I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal. To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet.

Don't families stay together?" "Not necessarily," he told me. "Earth ties have less meaning here. Relationships of thought, not blood, are what count.

There were still many things to learn, but not so many as before. Strangely, life was becoming almost bearable.

It's at times like this I hate the brain. It always builds more barriers than it can topple.

Why should a Jew fear the cross?" he said. "Why should a vampire who had been a Jew fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of them suffer from hysterical blindness before mirrors. But as far as the cross goes—well, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross." She

It was not my pain but Ann's. She was crying, frightened. Because I was hurt. She was afraid for me. I felt her anguish. She was suffering terribly. I tried to will away the shadows but I couldn't. Tried in vain to speak her name. Don't cry, I thought. I'll be all right. Don't be afraid. I love you, Ann. Where are you?

It was more than a spider. It was every unknown terror in the world fused into wriggling, poison-jawed horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form.

Siempre, a pesar de todo, había deseado encontrar a un semejante: hombre, mujer, niño, no importaba. Sin la incesante influencia de las masas, el sexo perdía rápidamente importancia. En cambio, la soledad seguía en primera línea.

To look at the entire journey all at once was stupidity. You thought of it in segments; that was the only way.

The essence of it all—this is the important part—was the knowledge that my thoughts had been real. Not just the things I said and did. What went on in my mind as well, positive or negative.

For everything in life, there's a counterpart in afterlife. This includes the most beautiful as well as the ugliest of phenomena.

When matter is put aside, all creation becomes exclusively mental, that's all.

The silence of the library was complete save for the thudding of his shoes as he walked along the second-floor hallway. Outside, there were birds sometimes and, even lacking that, there seemed to be a sort of sound outside. Inexplicable, perhaps, but it never seemed deathly still in the open as it did inside a building. Especially here in this giant, gray-stoned building that housed the literature of a world's dead.

The red hands had stopped at four-twenty-seven. He wondered what day they had stopped. As he descended the stairs with his armful of books, he wondered at just what moment the clock stopped. Had it been morning or night? Was it raining or shining? Was anyone there when it stopped?

Send her loving thoughts," he told me. "That's all?" "That's quite a lot, Chris," he said. "Thoughts are very real.

The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him." Thank you, Dr. Van Helsing, he thought, putting down his copy of Dracula.

Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own encroachments?

The man is mollified. The systematic juices leave off bubbling, the fires sink, the coals are scattered. But the anger is still there, apart. Energy is never lost; a primal law. -Mad House

He kept thinking about Mary. What a fool he'd been to let her go. To think, with the thoughtless assurance of youth, that the world was replete with endless possibilities. He'd thought it a mistake to choose so early in life and embrace the present good. He'd been a great one for looking for greener pastures. He'd kept looking until all his pastures were brown with time. (Old Haunts)

The last man in the world was irretrievably stuck with his delusions.

They sat there in the evening of the last day. And, though there was no actual point to it, they loved each other.

desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations.