Macabre Quotes

“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

“I see black light (his last words)”
― Victor Hugo

“That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear - the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model

“The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,
made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.”
― Edward Gorey

“On a Creep Scale from Hello Kitty to Cthulhu, I award it a Freddy
Krueger.

Granuaile MacTiernan”
― Kevin Hearne, A Test of Mettle

“The skeleton key unlocks the mind and swings open the door of imagination. A far better place than here A much safer place than there The quintessential somewhere The mystical nowhere The enigmatic anywhere My gift to you - the key to everywhere.
The mortal will find itself lost while the soul always knows the way it is grateful for the darkness and celebrates the day

I can give you peace my peace I give you... but I cannot be your savior or your god - I cannot be the light along your path - I can only give you the lamp and point the way.

The blind will see... the deaf will hear... but those who choose reason will never understand.

Woe to the ones who think they know the answers they will cease to ask the questions that may be their own salvation.

We possess the knowledge of the Universe from conception. Once born we are taught to forget.

If we cannot look out at our world and see our children's vision then we are truly blind we are unable to lead them to paradise.

"Even people who are in the dark search for their shadows. Shadows exist only if there is light. We will never find total darkness - not even in death... ...and we always cast a shadow no matter how overcast our skies become. You are never alone."

Do not listen to the voice that shouts to you from behind desks behind podiums behind altars. Do not pay attention to the orators and the opportunists. Do not be distracted by the promises made behind masks. Listen to the quiet. Listen to the whispers as they gently guide you through the assaults of man's absurdities. Listen to the gentle breathing of your mother and lay your head to rest in her peace and in her warm embrace and understand that truth and power lie within you. Breathe silence.

The free bird will always return to the cage sooner or later to seek food and water and the loving hand of it's caretaker.”
― M. Teresa Clayton

“Murder is only killing in the wrong place.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“I’ve always believed that talking to the dead is sometimes easier than talking to the living.” She shrugged at his questioning look. “They listen better.”
― Grace Draven, Phoenix Unbound

“When this is all over, I will plant daisies in your skull.”
― K.D. Edwards

“Poor kid-- all she’d wanted to do was get her teeth fixed. ”
― Tom Upton

“If I were pressed, I would admit that she was beautiful, in a dead bride sort of way.”
― Melika Dannese Lux, Corcitura

“Uscì quindi dalla casa del fuoco e si diresse per la strada notturna - era mezzanotte - verso la ferrovia sotterranea, dove il silenzioso convoglio ad aria compressa, scivolando come un'ombra dentro il suo budello bene oleato nelle viscere della terra, lo rigurgitò con uno sbuffo possente d'aria calda, sulla scala mobile dal pavimento color crema, che saliva verso la superficie, nella zona suburbana.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“To see a dead body was to recoil, mind spinning a dust-devil of thoughts - that is not me - see the difference between us? That is not me, that is not me. No one I know, no one I have ever known. That is not me . . . but . . . it could be.

So easily it could be.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“In the beginning, we are all strangers.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Hotel Miramar: An Old Castle Novel

“Oh, Lilias,” Uncle James groaned. “For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t you have drawn a flower or something?” He glanced at me and said, “I’m sorry – she’s going through a bit of a macabre phase at the moment. I suppose all children do at some point, don’t they?”

I nodded, but couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever gone around drawing grisly murder scenes and presenting them to people as gifts.”
― Alex Bell, Frozen Charlotte

“Orospu çocuğu kan emicilerle çıkmaya başladığından beri bana hiç bir konuda tüm gerçeği anlattığına inanmıyorum Anita'
'Politik olarak doğrusunu söylemek gerekirse,senin o orospu çocuğu kan emici dediğin vampir, ST Louis'nin Şehir Efendisi Dolp'
'O seninde efendinmi Anita?'
'Ne?'
'Şehir Efendisinin insan hizmetkarımısın?”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Danse Macabre

“blue
red
yellow
flowers,
flies
picking
through a
deer's fur
until bone”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree

“Violet nightshade

Meaning: Fascination, witchcraft
Solanum brownii | New South Wales

A member of the nightshade family, often toxic. Commonly associated with death and ghosts in folklore. Latin name comes from 'solamen' meaning to quieten or comfort, and refers to the narcotic properties of some species. Used as food plants by the larvae of some butterflies and moths.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Tym zmarłym po śmierci rosły brody i paznokcie tak długie, że poprzebijały ziemię i zarosły całe miasto i ludzie się w tych brodach plątali, i już nie było wiadomo, do czego to będzie prowadzić; ale przyszedł szewczyk Skuba, zabił smoka, pojął za żonę królewnę, a potem zrobił porządek z brodami oraz obóz koncentracyjny dla opornych.”
― Zdzisław Beksiński, Zdzisław Beksiński. Opowiadania

“Two cats on a highway. Nighttime. One is lying on the shoulder. Hit by a car. The second is sitting by it, mouth open toward the heavens in silent pain. Full of pointy teeth. Instead of stars. Like ammunition. An empty road. Behind them. In front of them. Only the omnipresent dotted white line.”
― Jana Beňová, Away! Away!

“In Moonlight Fear by Stewart Stafford

Inexorable as a vampire's invite,
The glowing pendulum swung,
Crawled towards midnight's toll,
My witching hour fever dream.

Sleepwalking in sweaty silence,
Protection fled to soullessness,
No sanctuary in chanted words,
Awakening warning on the floor.

Spider's web tightrope to a sound,
Path blocked by an unseen form,
Driven out in the Lord's name,
Receding growls echoed isolation.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“He had tried sculpting in other materials - in clay, marble, wood, and bronze - but corpses were the only medium that really sang under his fingers.”
― Noah Medlock, A Botanical Daughter

“Les morts deviennent des étoiles.
C'est pourquoi, la nuit où tu mourras, le ciel sera beau.
C'est un peu ce que je souhaite.
Je t'aime.
Et j'aime beaucoup le fait que tu mourras.
Qu'un jour, tu ne seras plus qu'os blanchis,
Qu'un jour, tu ne seras plus que cendres blanches.
Une étoile blanche.
Et maintenant, déteste-moi, vas-y !
(Poème du télescope traduit dans ''Le Japon des femmes - Du IIe siècle à nos jours'')”
― 最果タヒ, 死んでしまう系のぼくらに

“The first trip to the garden was the hardest. After that, I'd found there was comfort in it. I'd decided the tradition wasn't macabre, as I'd originally thought. It was soothing. All the Ross women resting in the roots of the black locust trees seemed fitting. The garden thrived and died and thrived again. Its cycle was a perpetual memorial.”
― Willa Reece, Wildwood Whispers