Poppy Z. Brite > Quotes

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.”
― Poppy Z.Brite

“I believe in whatever gets you throught the night. [...] Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four A.M.knows all my secrets.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“There were books about how to be gay; he'd seen them in stores and libraries. Some of them even had diagrams. But there weren't any diagrams about how to fall in love with your best friend and not fuck everything up.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, The Value of X

“It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“He has 'le coeur comme un artichaud'. Eddy fumbled for her high school French. 'A heart like an artichoke?' 'Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood

“If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

“Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

“I'm your nightmare. Did you think you were done with nightmares, now you've become one?”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“I press my hands against my chest, wishing I could somehow be even closer to him. I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

“The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."

Steve backed away. "They bite?"

Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."

By geese?"

Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."

So how come he didn't die?"

This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

“Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“Let the night come. We are not afraid.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls

“If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“At some point you have to start letting people save their own life.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Stay Awake

“But if I die without trying again, I'm a coward. I don't mind having regrets about stuff I've done. It's the regrets about stuff I haven't done that bother me.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“All at once it hit him: this was power too, just as surely as smashing your fist into someone’s face, just as surely as putting a hammer through someone’s skull. The power to make another person crazy with pleasure instead of fear and pain, to have every cell in another person’s body at your thrall.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood

“And what was I if not death's ghostwriter?”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Exquisite Corpse

“With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood

“If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.


”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“I just want to know how you're made," Trevor breathed in his ear. "I love you so much, Zach. I want to climb inside you. I want to taste your brain. I want to feel your heart beating in my hands.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“In every long-term relationship are a few pockets of deep and dangerous water into which one can step unaware if not careful. Eventually, somebody drowns or the interested parties post warning signs around these pockets.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Soul Kitchen

“Atheists loved to use that term to describe some shadowy force that somehow controlled human destiny, but what the hell did they think the universe was? Did they think the stars and nebulae took an interest in their doings, and if they really meant God, why couldn’t they just say so?”
― Poppy Z. Brite, Prime