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For several years now I've collected quotes, taking note of phrases from books, movies, shows, etc. that caught my attention and that had meaning to me. These are some of the serious, the dark, the sometimes disturbing ones.
201. "...everything I did, I did for love...the love a natural mother feels for her children. That's the strongest love there is in the world, and it's the deadliest. There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids." -Dolores Claiborne, Stephen King
202. "I've done my part, n I feel at peace with myself. That's all that matters, I guess; that, n knowin exactly who you are. I know who I am..." -Dolores Claiborne, Stephen King
203. Enter, Stranger, at Your Riske: Here There Be Tygers. -quoted in Danse Macabre
204. I have written my belief that no one is exactly sure of what they mean on any given subject until they have written their thoughts down; I similarly believe that we have very little understanding of what we have thought until we have submitted these thoughts to others who are at least as intelligent as ourselves. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
205. Is horror art? On this second level, the work of horror can be nothing else; it achieves the level of art simply because it is looking for something beyond art, something that predates art: it is looking for what I would call phobic pressure points. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
206. On top is the "gross-out" level...But on another, more potent level, the work of horror really is a dance-a moving, rhythmic search. And what it's looking for is the place where you, the viewer or the reader, live at your most primitive level. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
207. Terror-what Hunter Thompson calls "fear and loathing"-often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
208. Horror in real life is an emotion that one grapples with-as I grappled with the realization that the Russians had beaten us into space-all alone. It is a combat waged in the secret recesses of the heart.
I believe that we are all ultimately alone and that any deep and lasting human contact is nothing more nor less than a necessary illusion-but at least the feelings which we think of as "positive" and "constructive" are a reaching-out, and effort to make contact and establish some sort of communication. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
209. Terror is the sound of the old man's continuing pulse-beat in "Tell-Tale Heart"-a quick sound, "like a watch wrapped in cotton." Horror is the amorphous but very physical "thing" in Joseph Payne Brennan's wonderful novella "Slime" as it enfolds itself over the body of a screaming dog.
But there is a third level-that of revulsion. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
210. The finest emotion is terror, that emotion which is called up in the tale of the Hook and also in that hoary old classic, "The Monkey's Paw." We actually see nothing outright nasty in either story; in one we have the hook and in the other there is the paw, which, dried and mummified, can surely be no worse than those plastic dogturds on sale at any novelty shop. It's what the mind sees that makes these stories quintessential tales of terror.
...Those horror comics of the fifties still sum up for me the epitome of horror, that emotion of fear that underlies terror, and emotion which is slightly less fine, because it is not entirely of the mind. Horror also invites a physical reaction by showing us something which is physically wrong. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
211. Nobody cry when Jaws die. -Dino De Laurentiis, quoted in Danse Macabre
212. I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams or childhood trauma-that becoming a writer (or a painter, actor, director, dancer, and so on) is a direct result of conscious will. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
213. The set identification in that case was strong enough so that I was also surprised into tears. I hated myself for being so blatantly manipulated, but manipulated I was, and there I sat, blubbering into my beard over a bunch of cartoon characters. But it wasn't Disney that manipulated me; I did it myself. It was the kid inside who wept, surprised out of dormancy and into schmaltzy tears...but at least awake for a while. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
214. What's behind the door or lurking at the top of the stairs is never as frightening as the door or the staircase itself. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
215. If we say "art" is any piece of creative work from which an audience receives more than it gives (a liberal definition of art, sure, but in this field it doesn't pay to be too picky), then I believe that the artistic value the horror movie most frequently offers is its ability to form a liason between our fantasy fears and our real fears. I've said and will reemphasize here that few horror movies are conceived with "art" in mind; most are conceived only with "profit" in mind. The art is not consciously created but rather thrown off, as an atomic pile throws off radiation. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
216. I can remember such things in an intellectual, even analytical way, as I can remember having a dressing that had actually grown into the tissue yanked from the site of a cyst-removal operation that occured when I was twelve. I screamed from the pain and then fainted dead away. I can remember the pulling sensation as the gauze tore free of the new, healthy tissue (the dressing removal was performed by a nurse's aide who apparently had no idea what she was doing), I can remember the scream, and I can remember the faint. What I can't remember is the pain itself. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
217. It may be that nothing in the world is so hard to comprehend as a terror whose time has come and gone-which maybe why parents scold their children for their fear of the bogeyman, when as children themselves they had to cope with exactly the same fears (and the same sympathetic but uncomprehending parents). -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
218. The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized...and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark...For myself, I like to see the most aggressive of them-Dawn of the Dead, for instance-as lifting a trapdoor in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath.
Why bother? Because it keeps them from getting out, man. It keeps them down there and me up here. It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is love, and I would agree with that. As long as you keep the gators fed. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
219. ...It would be remarkable indeed if we did nt fear death a little. It's just sort of there, isn't it, the great irreducible x-factor of our lives, faceless father of a hundred religions, so seamless and ungraspable that it usually isn't even discussed at cocktail parties. Death becomes myth in the horror movies, but let's be clear on the fact that horror movies mythicize death on the simplest level: death in the horror movies is when the monsters get you. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
220. Children are rarely cruel on purpose, and they even more rarely torture, as they understand the concept; they may, however, kill in the spirit of experimentation, watching the death struggles of the bug on the sidewalk in the same clinical way that a biologist would watch a guinea pig die after inhaling a whiff of nerve gas. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
221. I'll not descend to the romantic oversimplification that suggests we see things more clearly as children, but I will suggest that children see more intensely. The greens of lawns are, to the child's eye, the color of lost emeralds in H. Rider Haggard's conception of King Solomon's mines, the blue of the winter sky is as sharp as an ice pick, the white of new snow is a dream-blast of energy. And black...is blacker. Much blacker indeed. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
222. Here is the final truth of horror movies: They do not love death, as some have suggested; they love life. They do not celebrate deformity but by dwelling on deformity, they sing of health and energy. By showing us the miseries of the damned, they help us to rediscover the smaller (but never petty) joys of our own lives. They are the barber's leeches of the psyche, drawing not bad blood but anxiety...for a little while, anyway. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
223. Omega, the horror film sings in those children's voices. Here is the end. Yet the ultimate subtext that underlies all good horror films is, But not yet. Not this time. Because in the final sense, the horror movie is the celebration of those who feel they can examine death because it does not yet live in their own hearts. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
224. ...real fans of the genre look back on a film like 'The Brain From Planet Arous' (It Came From Another World WITH AN INSATIABLE LUST FOR EARTH WOMEN!) with something like real love. It is the love one spares for an idiot child, true, but love is love, right? Right. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
225. They are books and stories which seem to me to fulfill the primary duty of literature-to tell us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who never existed. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
226. ...humor and horror lie side by side, and that to deny one is to deny the other. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
227. ...without the sacred there is no profane. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
228. There is a saying-and I would be happy to attribute it if I could remember who to attribute it to-that perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
229. ...there is no horror without beauty; no discord without a prior sense of melody; no nasty without nice. -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
230. Along the way, I said all and everything, just about, that I would ever want to say about my younger self and how I felt about that terrifying thing: Life, and that other terror: Death, and the exhilaration of both. -Ray Bradbury, on Something Wicked This Way Comes, quoted in Danse Macabre
231. I've always wondered if the appeal of the vampire myth for children doesn't lie partly in the simple fact that vampires get to slep all day and stay up all night (vampires never have to miss Creature Features at midnight because of school the next day.) -Danse Macabre, Stephen King
232. There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
Consuming/confusing
This lack of self-control I fear is never-ending
Controlling/I can't seem
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
[Without a sense of confidence I'm convinced
That there's just too much pressure to take]
I've felt this way before
So insecure
Crawling in my skin
These wounds/They will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real -"Crawling", Linkin Park
233. Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters
Trust I seek, and I find in you
Everyday for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters
So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters -"Nothing Else Matters", Metallica
234. New blood joins this earth
And quickly he's subdued -"Unforgiven", Metallica
235. What I've felt
What I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never free
Never me
So I dub thee
Unforgiven -"Unforgiven", Metallica
236. I put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
For all this
There's only one thing you should know...
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
And in the end
It doesn't even matter -"In the End", Linkin Park
237. Dedicated to a certain girl...I hope your life is filled with wonderful accomplishments, Love, and all the magic you desire... -But I hope your death is slow and horrible. -The Monsters In My Tummy, Roman Dirge
238. Standing tall was Alone
On her stilted legs.
I just don't want to die,
She pleads and she begs. -The Monsters In My Tummy, Roman Dirge
239. Betrayal was tough!
A floating sack of tears.
Filled up by the pain
that had built through the years.
"Destroy me or not!
I really don't care."
This was both a plea
and also a dare. -The Monsters In My Tummy, Roman Dirge
240. So the two soldiers
fought a brave fight.
They killed each other
And in a way this is right.
The emotions are dead,
both the good and the bad.
Now I feel loss....
They were all that I had. -The Monsters In My Tummy, Roman Dirge
241. When the great fall, the less must lead. -Aragorn, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
242. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to... -Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
243. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to sayanything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to. -Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
244. Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped. -Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
245. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. -Gandalf, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
246. Hate me, but do it honestly. -Kain, Soul Reaver 2: Legacy of Kain
247. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it. -Spike, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
248. The heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Coliseum. He'll bring them death...and they will love him for it. -Gladiator
249. I'm a writer, I give the truth scope. -Geoffrey Chaucer, A Knight's Tale
250. If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are. -Captain Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation