109 Quotes With Dark Themes

In the shadowy realms of literature and philosophy, dark themes often illuminate the deepest truths of the human condition. These themes explore the complexities of our emotions, the struggles of existence, and the darker facets of our psyche. Whether through musings on mortality, existential dread, or the mysteries that lie on the fringes of our understanding, quotes with dark themes have an uncanny ability to resonate with us on profound levels. In this curated collection, we delve into 109 quotes that offer raw, unfiltered glimpses into the darkness, challenging us to reflect on our own narratives and the shadows that dance at their edges.

1. “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. “It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” - Edgar Allan Poe

3. “How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline."I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave.""Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline."Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.” - Neil Gaiman

4. “Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said: You do not have to choose. ” - Robin McKinley

5. “Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference?” - Denis Johnson

6. “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.” - Ray Bradbury

7. “Darkness promotes speech.” - Alberto Manguel

8. “In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. ” - Alberto Manguel

9. “It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.” - Stephen King

10. “We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.” - Khalil Gibran

11. “Golden Arches' are the gateway to the afterlife.” - Gasmaskman

12. “Hope is the privilege of the weak.” - Gasmaskman

13. “It is important to correct bad behavior one toe at a time.” - Gasmaskman

14. “I'm reaching out my hand. I hope you are too. I just want to be in the dark with you.” - greg brown

15. “Falling into ruin was a bit like falling in love: Both descents stripped you bare and left you as you were at your core. And both endings are equally painful.” - J.R. Ward

16. “My friend wants to get moving and so do I,' Eddie said. 'We've got miles to go yet.'I know that. It's on your face, son. Like a scar.'Eddie was fascinated by the idea of duty and ka as something that left a mark, something that might look like decoration to one eye and disfigurement to another. Outside, thunder cracked and lightning flashed.” - Stephen King

17. “Humanity was a passing notion to him; something he liked to try on for size and model in the dressing room, but never actually felt compelled to buy.” - Jane Bled

18. “Now it's the dark's turn to be afraid.” - Joseph Delaney

19. “In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.” - Brennan Manning

20. “She stood slim and proud as some medieval witch princess against dawn.” - L.J. Smith

21. “I follow Plato only with my mindPure beauty strikes me as a little thinA little cold, however beautiful.I am in love with what is mixed and impureDoubtful, dark and hard to disencumberI want beauty I must dig for, search for.Pure beauty is beginning and not endBegin with the sun and drop from sun to cloudFrom cloud to tree, and from tree to earth itselfAnd deeper yet to the earth dark root.I am in love with what resists my lovingWith what I have to labor to make live.” - Robert Francis

22. “The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.” - Aleister Crowley

23. “Holy men tell us life is a mystery.They embrace that concept happily.But some mysteries bite and barkand come to get you in the dark.” - Dean Koontz

24. “The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go” - Stephen King

25. “Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.” - Stephen King

26. “We live in a dark and romantic and quite tragic world.” - Karl Lagerfeld

27. “In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).” - Barbara Kingsolver

28. “The dark and the light, they exist side by side,Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other.The darkened path is as illuminated as the lightened,Only the fear of the dark keeps us from seeing our way.” - Raven Davies

29. “Disappear Here.The syringe fills with blood.You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters.Wonder if he's for sale.People are afraid to merge. To merge.” - Bret Easton Ellis

30. “I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.” - Oscar Wilde

31. “Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.” - Ilsa J. Bick

32. “I wasn’t going to argue with you. Why ever would you think that? I never argue."Lucian smiled at her. She was so small, it amazed him she was such a strong person. "Of course you do not argue. What was I thinking? Go to sleep, honey, and allow my poor body to rest.""I’m already asleep. You’re the one gabbing.” - Christine Feehan

33. “Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.” - kate dicamillo

34. “Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.” - Galt Niederhoffer

35. “Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.” - J.R. Ward

36. “I see your bleeding dark side. I feel your angry heart. Reveals forbidden places. More monster yet alive...” - Static-X

37. “I rememeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visible.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.” - R. Scott Bakker

38. “What happens when the hitcher and the driver are equally murderous?” - steve aylett

39. “Dad, will they ever come back?""No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road.""Oh, no," said Will."Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun."They moved around the carousel slowly."What will they look like? How will we know them?""Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here."Both boys looked around swiftly.But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole.Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will.Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders.The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey.Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy.Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord.Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes.How easy, thought Will.Just this once, thought Jim.But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally...The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment....finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks...proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows....Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.” - Ray Bradbury

40. “I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!” - William Faulkner

41. “Do you believe in an afterlife?" the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.Brown nodded. "I think this is it.” - Stephen King

42. “This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.” - Holly Black

43. “If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you."Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone.” - Holly Black

44. “Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.” - Walt Whitman

45. “My heart, for unknown reasons, seems to freeze in motion in my chest. I can see he senses it and he holds his pause to enjoy my suffering, prolonging my ignorance. “Viktor, what?” - Gwenn Wright

46. “The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.” - Jess C. Scott

47. “I find no peace, and all my war is done,I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;I fly above the wind yet can I not arise;And naught I have and all the world I seize on.That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison,And holdeth me not, yet can I scape nowise;Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,And yet of death it giveth none occasion.Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain;I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;I love another, and thus I hate myself;I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.Likewise displeaseth me both death and lifeAnd my delight is causer of this strife.” - Sir Thomas Wyatt

48. “Outside everything was uncannily visible in the light of the full moon, but here in the dark shaded alleys the night was conscious of itself. ("The Moon Slave")” - Barry Pain

49. “I felt the human disease that is ignorance suddenly leave my body. Just like that. Like a hot, desperate piss after a long car ride.” - J.A. Redmerski

50. “He stopped and leaned against a pole and looked up at the deaf and swollen sky. It was a movement of dark shapes, a hurrying, a running. He closed his eyes. ("Hunger")” - Charles Beaumont

51. “It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage...” - Robert Frost

52. “Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.” - May Sarton

53. “From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live! ("A Tough Tussle")” - Ambrose Bierce

54. “That, dillop brain, is what getting close to the Darke does. It makes you think only of yourself. It takes you away from people you care about. And now you don't have anyone to talk to and it serves you right.” - Angie Sage

55. “This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.” - N.K. Jemisin

56. “It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.” - Markus Zusak

57. “She wasn't to know there was no room for Soren - or any other boy - in my heart. There was only one boy taking up that place.Luca.” - Lee Monroe

58. “Stare at the dark too long and you will eventually see what isn’t there.” - Cameron Jace

59. “Don't let me get into your head. I will twist it and alter it until even you won't recognize yourself. You cannot begin to comprehend the power I possess. I can harm you in any way impossible.” - Troy Bisson

60. “I really wasn't sure if I wanted this guy knowing where I lived. After all, he was wielding a baseball bat, and I had just seen him strike several people with that bat.” - Holly Hood

61. “Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing myself. 'Hyaa!' I yell. 'Hyaa. Hyaa!' It's the sound my father makes when entering his toolshed, the cry of cowboys as they round up dogies, and it suggests a certain degree of authority. Snakes, bats, weasels --it's time to head up and move on out.” - David Sedaris

62. “The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.” - David Sedaris

63. “It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions.The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow.It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself.But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters.Or were there?The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they?What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats?She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside.She knew something was out there.” - Caroline B. Cooney

64. “Like a Falcon, she needed the dark to understand who her master was. She would learn to trust him, to rely upon him, to anticipate what he wanted from her. And like any master with his salt, he would reward her for her obedience. He would be exceedingly firm, but he would also be as fair as he could be. He had notchosen the instrument of his revenge at random. He had chosen a beautiful submissive. And what was a submissive if not adaptable -if not a survivor?” - CJ Roberts

65. “As a child, I was afraid of the dark and the monsters on the outside.As a man, I run away from the light, afraid to show the monsters within.” - Anthony Liccione

66. “The only way to truly be safer, was to accept the dark, to walk in it with eyes wide open, to be a part of it. To keep your enemies close.” - CJ Roberts

67. “Being on the side of the Light is much tougher than being on the side of the Dark...” - Sergei Lukyanenko

68. “But you still need the two: the dark and the light. You can't see one without the other.” - Julia Green

69. “Your diet must be about fifty-fifty, carrots and locoweed," Annie said softly.He froze."I can't figure out what in the name of God's labia majora you think you're doing...but I'm impressed by how well you're doing it in the dark. You must have eyes like a cat.” - Spider Robinson

70. “A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.” - Gillian Flynn

71. “There's something special about her. When she helped me with her touch-""Exactly what was she touching that was so memorable for you?""Watch your mouth.” - Michelle Rowen

72. “I walked in the dark forest at night...I couldn't see much further in the dark ,I heard the sound of the past, ..Memories Went back clear to me and Fear started hunting me, ..No Way To Escape , No Way To Stand Still...” - Hamza wolf

73. “Darkness is just light turned inside out.” - Beelzebub

74. “The day we stop learning is the day we die.” - Michael Scott

75. “He was abominable...and the most alluring, tortured soul I'd ever met.” - Becca Fitzpatrick

76. “You don't find light by avoiding the darkness.” - S. Kelley Harrell

77. “There's a light somewhere.It may not be much light butit beats the darkness.” - Charles Bukowski

78. “Are you following me?" He asked."Us?" I was the first to speak. "Um, maybe. Hi there. How are you tonight?"He looked at me like I might be a bit crazy.” - Michelle Rowen

79. “There was nothing the matter out there. It was in here, with me. I decided I'd better go to work, maybe that would exorcise me. I fled from the room almost as though it were haunted. It was too late to stop off at a breakfast counter now. I didn't want any, anyway. My stomach kept giving little quivers. In the end I didn't go to work, either. I couldn't, I wouldn't have been any good. I telephoned in that I was too ill to come, and it was no idle excuse, even though I was upright on my two legs.I roamed around the rest of the day in the sunshine. Wherever the sunshine was the brightest, I sought and stayed in that place, and when it moved on I moved with it. I couldn't get it bright enough or strong enough. I avoided the shade, I edged away from it, even the slight shade of an awning or of a tree.And yet the sunshine didn't warm me. Where others mopped their brows and moved out of it, I stayed - and remained cold inside. And the shade was winning the battle as the hours lengthened. It outlasted the sun. The sun weakened and died; the shade deepened and spread. Night was coming on, the time of dreams, the enemy. ("Nightmare")” - Cornell Woolrich

80. “Had pretended to be Abbadon of the Dark, when always he had been working for the Light.” - Melissa de la Cruz

81. “He was the monster that no one thought to look for in the light of day. It was a common mistake. People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety - like light - is a facade. Underneath, the whole world is drenched in darkness.” - CJ Roberts

82. “But death is stronger than that and when you cover your eyes you are the one who can't see the dark. The dark still sees you.” - Francesca Lia Block

83. “It goes so fast, he thought, they don't tell you that, how fast it goes...” - S.E. Hinton

84. “Creatures of the Darkness BY VICKI JORDANIt was world of vampires and demons, where innocence was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness,where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowedus whole. An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the darkhad finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally,for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows couldcome out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away. A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampireabout the changes, of which she did not approve. “Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you havewon?” The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement and delight. “Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there’s nolight to shine on false identities. We didn’t destroy the world just to scare; we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the darkness that was once hidden within, and you’ll soon meet the darkness in you once my fangs pierce your skin.”We are our own greatest fears…..” - Chris Colfer

85. “In the forestlichen writhes and assembles itself into signs to light my path through the deep dark north shadow; and I emerge at last onto a hillside strewn with logogrammatic stones, and scramble away from spruce tops." in the poem "Beyond the Beacon" from Terra Affirmative.” - jay woodman

86. “There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.” - Terry Pratchett

87. “He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine-coloured walls...” - Nelson Algren

88. “There’s this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor.In death Rose became Linden’s parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs.” - Lauren DeStefano

89. “I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.” - Lauren DeStefano

90. “We were his disposable things. Brought to him like cattle. Stripped of what made us sisters or daughters or children. There was nothing that he could take from us—our genes, our bones, our wombs—that would ever satisfy him. There was no other way that we would be free.” - Lauren DeStefano

91. “I’m alone, stumbling through the city in the dark, trying not to let the night freeze my blood.” - Isaac Marion

92. “Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends’ corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men's chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite.” - Isaac Marion

93. “Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [...] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over.” - Isaac Marion

94. “It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.” - Isaac Marion

95. “I have no use for your body, for within its youth lies a rotten wench already deceased.” - Keisha Keenleyside

96. “...a passing face together with his grief turned you into a weeping Madonna...” - John Geddes

97. “It was dark now, and broodingly sluggish. Like something supine waiting to spring, with just the tip of its tail twitching. Leaves stood still on the trees. An evil green star glinted in the black sky like a hostile eye, like an evil spying eye.("For The Rest Of Her Life")” - Cornell Woolrich

98. “You saw me before I saw you. In the airport, that day in August, you had that look in your eyes, as though you wanted something from me, as though you’d wanted it for a long time. No one had ever looked at me like that before, with that kind of intensity. It unsettled me, surprised me, I guess. Those blue, blue eyes, icy blue, looking back at me as if I could warm them up. They’re pretty powerful, you know, those eyes, pretty beautiful, too.” - Lucy Christopher

99. “I didn’t look back, but I knew you were still watching. It probably sounds weird, but I could just feel it. The hairs on my neck bristled when you blinked.” - Lucy Christopher

100. “Did you know that darkness has a taste, Grandma?” - Jo Nesbø

101. “Shadows were too black, and when a breeze stirred the trees, the shadows changed in a disquieting way.” - Stephen King

102. “What about nightmares? Have you experienced sexual dreams of a dark nature?” - S.M. Reine

103. “His breathing was heavy, and full of life. He shivered still, his hand finding Katty unsteady and unprepared of what was going to come next. “I hurt you!” Nico said, his voice raised with worry. “No, not at all, honey, my sweetest Master, but you have me, all of me, the wholeness of me and my darkness.” “You play with the devil dear.” Nico sombered. “No.” Katty defiantly said. “You took my blood and it made me your slave, yet I love every minute of it.”“Tell me you love me Katty.” He said, nearing her closer than close, mending the space between them with the threads of courage. “Tell me you have no fear, nor no weakness against me. Or no shame in loving me.”“I fear you not, my love.” Katty sincerely committed. “I fear only that you will be taken away by the hands of the vampire hunter, and only then, will I fall.” - Keira D. Skye

104. “A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream.” - Blaise Cendrars

105. “I don't know why, but there's always the part of you, the part that hides in the shadows protecting the self-destruct button, that doesn't ever want to leave the dark behind.” - Cecilia Ahern

106. “A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it. Our shadow asks us to look at what we don’t want to see” - Terry Tempest Williams

107. “Despite their macabre imaginations, they don't believe the things they say, all those things about magic and fantômes. But I do. I know he lingers. I've heard his voice, soft as a lover's whisper.” - Sara Stark

108. “Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there.” - Sara Stark

109. “There might be a million wrong people in your life, but when the right one comes everything looks dark.” - M.F. Moonzajer