133 Horror Quotes

As the spine tingling shadows of night descend and the unknown whispers just out of sight, there's an enduring allure in the flickering glow of a good horror story. The power of the genre lies in its ability to evoke deep-seated emotions, from bone-chilling fear to exhilarating suspense. Whether you're a devout horror enthusiast or a curious newcomer, the right words can transport you to the eerie worlds of haunted mansions, cursed relics, and lurking monsters. In this collection of the top 133 horror quotes, we delve into the most memorable and haunting lines that have left an indelible mark on the genre. Prepare yourself for a journey through the darkness, where every quote is a portal to a realm of undeniable terror and lingering dread.

1. “It is dark. You cannot see. Only the hint of stars out the broken window. And a voice as old as the Snake from the Garden whispers, 'I will hold your hand.” - John Wick

2. “Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” - Cormac McCarthy

3. “Very well, but remember this... I'll be looking at you when you're laid on the cross and the twelve blows are crashing down on your limbs. When the crowd is finally tired of your screams and wandered home, I will climb up through your blood and sit beside you. I will look deep into your eyes... and drop by drop I will trickle my disgust into them like burning acid until... finally... you perish.” - Patrick Suskind

4. “Through the ages, countless spiritual disciplines have urged us to look within ourselves and seek the truth. Part of that truth resides in a small, dark room -- one we are afraid to enter ” - Matthew J. Pallamary

5. “I think that true horror is accomplished by slowly getting into your brain. The old way is much more scary.” - Sergio Aragones

6. “I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.” - Henry James

7. “Lo!" cried the demon. "I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!" He looked at Cabal. "Where's your dread rod?""I left it at home," replied Cabal. "Didn't think I really needed it.""You can't summon me without a dread rod!" said Lucifuge, appalled."You're here, aren't you?""Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven't got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?""I don't even know what Ematille is."Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. "Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?""Don't be fatuous.""Half a bottle of brandy?""I don't drink brandy.""It's not for you.""I have a hip flask," said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram."Cheers," said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. "This really is a shambles," the demon added finally. "What did you summon me for, anyway?” - Jonathan L. Howard

8. “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” - H.P. Lovecraft

9. “Even the most impassioned devotee of the ghost story would admit that the taste for it is slightly abnormal, a survival, perhaps, from adolescence, a disease of deficiency suffered by those whose lives and imaginations do not react satisfactorily to normal experience and require an extra thrill” - L.P. Hartley

10. “Our fiction is not merely in flight from the physical data of the actual world…it is, bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic – a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation…our classic [American] literature is a literature of horror for boys” - Leslie Fielder

11. “The ‘experimental’ writer, then, is simply following the story’s commands to the best of his human ability. The writer is not the story, the story is the story. See? Sometimes this is very hard to accept and sometimes too easy. On the one hand, there’s the writer who can’t face his fate: that the telling of a story has nothing at all to do with him; on the other hand, there’s the one who faces it too well: that the telling of the story has nothing at all to do with him” - Thomas Ligotti

12. “They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs.” - Susan Hill

13. “Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes.It falls upon her.Love is like dying.” - Stephen King

14. “Horror fiction seems to spawn more dumbass 'rules' than any other kind of writing, and one of the dumbest is the assumed 'requirement' of a twist ending, going all the way back to H.H. Munro. This story is also the result of a long rumination on how stories are sometimes scuttled or diminished by succumbing to such 'rules'.” - David J. Schow

15. “The divine is always abominable."Houses Under The Sea” - Caitlín R. Kiernan

16. “It is this outer reach of existential abnegation – the moment where subjective identity deserts itself and becomes enslaved without consciousness of its subjugated condition – that Mirbeau consistently sought to decry with horror.” - Emily Apter

17. “Bullshit. You can paint with a fork, you can kill with a fork. A fork is a tool. Don't let yourself be confined by the definitions of others.” - Brian Fatah Steele

18. “Now the screams were awful to hear as men burned like candles all along the deck. Black smoke billowed over the sea. Argurios could not believe what he was watching. At least fifty helpless men were dying in agony. One man managed to free himself and leap into the sea. Amazingly, when he surfaced the flames were still consuming him.All along the beach there was silence as the stunned crowd watched the magical fires burning the galley and it's crew.” - David Gemmell

19. “The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.” - Michel Houellebecq

20. “I do not love men: I love what devours them.” - Andre Gide

21. “But if what interests you are stories of the fantastic, I must warn you that this kind of story demands more art and judgment than is ordinarily imagined.” - Charles Nodier

22. “There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.” - Arthur Machen

23. “The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;We find delight in the most loathsome things;Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.” - Charles Baudelaire

24. “From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.” - Peter Straub

25. “Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.” - Remy De Gourmont

26. “norris didn't cry, but he was apt to puke on them, the way he had puked on homer gamache that time he had found homer sprawled in a ditch out by homeland cemetary, beaten to death with his own artificial arm.” - Stephen King

27. “I would like [my readers] to better understand human beings and human life as a result of having read [my] stories. I'd like them to feel that this was an experience that made things better for them and an experience that gave them hope. I think that the kind of things that we talk about at this conference -- fantasy very much so, science fiction, and even horror -- the message that we're sending is the reverse of the message sent by what is called "realistic fiction." (I happen to think that realistic fiction is not, in fact, realistic, but that's a side issue.) And what we are saying is that it doesn't have to be like this: things can be different. Our society can be changed. Maybe it's worse, maybe it's better. Maybe it's a higher civilization, maybe it's a barbaric civilization. But it doesn't have to be the way it is now. Things can change. And we're also saying things can change for you in your life. Look at the difference between Severian the apprentice and Severian the Autarch [in The Book of the New Sun], for example. The difference beteween Silk as an augur and Silk as calde [in The Book of the Long Sun]. You see?We don't always have to be this. There can be something else. We can stop doing the thing that we're doing. Moms Mabley had a great line in some movie or other -- she said, "You keep on doing what you been doing and you're gonna keep on gettin' what you been gettin'." And we don't have to keep on doing what we've been doing. We can do something else if we don't like what we're gettin'. I think a lot of the purpose of fiction ought to be to tell people that.” - Gene Wolfe

28. “Where got she her sullen mouthAnd where her swaying form?Would she live on eggs and applesWhen the blood of men is warm?(“The Young Witch”)” - George Sterling

29. “As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow, I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth's supreme horors-one of those nameless blights of outer voids whose faint demon scratchings we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our own finite vision has given us a merciful immunity.” - Howard Phillips Lovecraft

30. “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” - Edgar Allan Poe

31. “The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing. ("The Black Dog")” - Stephen Crane

32. “- A pan czy wierzy w duchy - spytał prelegenta jeden ze słuchaczy.- Oczywiście, że nie - odparł prelegent, po czym z wolna rozpłynąłsię w powietrzu.” - Arkady Strugatsky

33. “The place was silent and - aware.” - P.C. Wren

34. “I'm giving serious thought into eating yor wife” - Hannibal Lecter” - Thomas Harris

35. “You want to know how to stop this killer? Forgive yourself, and he’lldisappear from your life forever.”“Thanks. I’ll be sure to do that.”And I know:1. This is almost the same conversation I’ve had with myself many timesbefore.2. Gordon’s only trying to help.But it doesn’t matter.I:1. Say, “See you later.”2. Step outside.3. Close the door.I don’t want to, really. I want to go back inside and believe Gordon’s words,like a child believing in a fairy tale, and I want to escape this nightmare forever.But I can’t.I realize now that it’s easy to tell the difference between a real problem andan imaginary one.It’s just the terror of facing the truth that’s hard.” - Jeremy C. Shipp

36. “...That insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

37. “I will come,' the priest answered, 'for I have read in old books of these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste life and blood.” - Francis Marion Crawford

38. “One’s options in this world are as vast as the horizon, which is technically a circle and thus infinitely broad. Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution, for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow. They’re part of the same journey — our story.” - Lori R. Lopez

39. “While his brain lay slowly dying, Bevan felt his body come back to life.” - Stephanie Bedwell-Grime

40. “The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.” - H.P. Lovecraft

41. “I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do.” - H.P. Lovecraft

42. “There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.” - H.P. Lovecraft

43. “Shit rolls downhill. Bureaucracy rolls faster.” - David Wellington

44. “Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.” - Chuck Palahniuk

45. “In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural encounter in fiction seems to reflect some deeper disorientations in the culture at large.” - Howard Kerr

46. “Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years.” - Howard Kerr

47. “The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable.” - H.P. Lovecraft

48. “The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.” - Franz Rottensteiner

49. “As has already been noted, fantastic literature developed at precisely the moment when genuine belief in the supernatural was on the wane, and when the sources provided by folklore could safely be used as literary material. It is almost a necessity, for the writer as well as for the reader of fantastic literature, that he or she should not believe in the literal truth of the beings and objects described, although the preferred mode of literary expression is a naive realism. Authors of fantastic literature are, with a few exceptions, not out to convert, but to set down a narrative story endowed with the consistency and conviction of inner reality only during the time of the reading: a game, sometimes a highly serious game, with anxiety and fright, horror and terror.” - Franz Rottensteiner

50. “There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind.” - E.T.A. Hoffmann

51. “Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.” - Franz Rottensteiner

52. “Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.” - Franz Rottensteiner

53. “To the non-combatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement, but to those who entered the meat grinder itself the war was a netherworld of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.” - E.B. Sledge

54. “Blood is really warm,it's like drinking hot chocolatebut with more screaming.” - Ryan Mecum

55. “This, then, is the ultimate, that is only, consolation: simply that someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, and — like it or not — peculiar set of experiences to appreciate. Amazing thing to say, the consolation of horror in art is that it actually intensifies our panic, loudens it on the sounding-board of our horror-hollowed hearts, turns terror up full blast, all the while reaching for that perfect and deafening amplitude at which we may dance to the bizarre music of our own misery.” - Thomas Ligotti

56. “Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue.” - Angela Carter

57. “No sport, watching horror movie with friends in bright room.Try that alone at night without light with mirror above screen!” - Toba Beta

58. “Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.” - Stephen King

59. “Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.” - Mark Z. Danielewski

60. “I wanted to curl up into a fetal position and start sucking my thumb, let my tears and dripping saliva pool under me. Sorry. I tried living, tried being sentient. Can't do it. Can't live in the same universe with that.” - David Wong

61. “I discovered news of old horrors in old books; read intelligence of old atrocities in old periodicals; always in the back of my mind, every day a bit louder, I heard the seashell drone of some growing, coalescing force; I seemed to smell the bitter ozone aroma of lightings-to-come.” - Stephen King

62. “Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix.As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response.Bekka smiled to herself.This is what she lived for.” - Nathan Squiers

63. “These fools who haven't the slightest idea how to live the morals they espouse. These fools who proclaim themselves men of God, yet show not the slightest reverance to His word...Is it any different from a drunkard preaching temperance? A whore preaching modesty?” - Seth Grahame-Smith

64. “I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.” - Shirley Jackson

65. “You wouldn't think that people would believe that we all got so incredibly beat up—in so many interesting ways—from a bear attack. Especially not when Carmel is sporting a bite mark that is a spot-on match for wounds found at one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent history. But I never fail to be surprised by what people will believe.” - Kendare Blake

66. “Walk with this tomorrow night. If nothing happens, thendon’t come back. Forget about us, this place, but if you feel theNightwalker in you awaken, then return to where you belong.Return to me, and the streets will run red with blood.” - Keith Kekic

67. “It's a rotten world, Miss Millick,' said Mr. Wran, talking at the window. 'Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It's time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began a rule of fear, They'd be no worse than men.' ("Smoke Ghost")” - Fritz Leiber

68. “It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roots he had grown into the habit of glancing at just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar paper, tarred gravel, and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts. There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the normal, smoky half-light, or tinged with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly windblown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense picturesque; dreary but meaningful. Unconsciously it came to symbolize for Catesby Wran certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and Fascist wars. The quick, daily glance into the half darkness became an integral part of his life. Oddly, he never saw it in the morning, for it was then his habit to sit on the other side of the car, his head buried in the paper.One evening toward winter he noticed what seemed to be a shapeless black sack lying on the third roof from the tracks. He did not think about it. It merely registered as an addition to the well-known scene and his memory stored away the impression for further reference. Next evening, however, he decided he had been mistaken in one detail. The object was a roof nearer than he had thought. Its color and texture, and the grimy stains around it, suggested that it was filled with coal dust, which was hardly reasonable. Then, too, the following evening it seemed to have been blown against a rusty ventilator by the wind, which could hardly have happened if it were at all heavy. ("Smoke Ghost")” - Fritz Leiber

69. “He wasn’t sure why he felt so compelled to follow the singing, or why he needed to bring the foot with him, but he knew the two phenomena were connected. And in the midst of the mystery lay his father. His father’s sanity. Nicholas was sure of this.” - Kevin Wallis

70. “The little girl’s face was from Will’s vilest nightmares. Cavernous mouth, distended chin, bastardized nose. The enormous, bulging eyes glared at Will, demanded he see the truth, commanded him to acknowledge his sin.” - Kevin Wallis

71. “When Stephen King elaborated on his inspirations for his novel "Carrie" he draws from a time when he was a young man, and describes his impression when he came upon a statue of Christ on the cross, hanging there in misery, and he thought "If THAT guy ever came back, he probably wouldn't be in a saving mood."” - Stephen King

72. “There are people in the world, who are just wrong, and then there are the masses of population that are right, or at the very least they lie in the veil of between. I on the other hand, do not belong to any group. I don’t exist. It’s not that I don’t have substance; I have a body like everyone else. I can feel the fire when it burns against my skin, the rain when it caresses my face and the breeze as it fingers my hair. I have all the senses that other people do. I am just empty, inside.” - J.D. Stroube

73. “Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling beganto affect the netting under which the three children lay.It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallicsound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This wasaccompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, andchilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brotherhad already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the littleone, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but ina very low tone, and with bated breath:--"Sir?""Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes."What is that?""It's the rats," replied Gavroche.And he laid his head down on the mat again.The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of theelephant, and who were the living black spots which we have alreadymentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long asit had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the sameas their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the goodstory-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves inthrongs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begunto bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap.Still the little one could not sleep."Sir?" he began again."Hey?" said Gavroche."What are rats?""They are mice."This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice inthe course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, helifted up his voice once more."Sir?""Hey?" said Gavroche again."Why don't you have a cat?""I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ateher."This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the littlefellow began to tremble again.The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:--"Monsieur?""Hey?""Who was it that was eaten?""The cat.""And who ate the cat?""The rats.""The mice?""Yes, the rats."The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which atecats, pursued:--"Sir, would those mice eat us?""Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche.The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:--"Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catchhold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!” - Victor Hugo

74. “The shortest horror story:The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.” - Frederic Brown

75. “Sad-looking brown eyes, they wrenched his heart like a gut punch. Worse – hell, worse – a bloke could punch him in the head but he’d stay up, and grin through the bloody split lip, intimidating his attacker; but there was no honour in wounds inside, wounds that only you could deal with.” - Karl Drinkwater

76. “Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.” - Bram Stoker

77. “Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen.” - Kealan Patrick Burke

78. “I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by an act of faith. It was as solid as a wardrobe. You don't have to believe in wardrobes. They are there, with corners. (The Troll)” - T.H. White

79. “It was at the outskirts of the world that the Old Things accumulated, like driftwood round the edges of the sea. ("The Troll")” - T.H. White

80. “She stooped for a stone and dropped it down.'Fancy being where that is now,' she said, peering into the blackness; 'fancy going round and round like a mouse in a pail, clutching at the slimy sides, with the water filling your mouth, and looking up to the little patch of sky above.''You had better come in,' said Benson, very quietly. 'You are developing a taste for the morbid and horrible.' ("The Well")” - W.W. Jacobs

81. “His body walks out onto the darkened stage , and a roar goes up from the crowd. He stands in front of the mic, and he can feel his face twist in a sneer-the Elvis sneer from his dreams-though he never told it to move. He is powerless now, a spectator at his own moment of glory.” - Joseph Garraty

82. “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.” - H. H. Munro (Saki)

83. “I would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I can't bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not love me!" -Claudia.” - Anne Rice

84. “Either way, it happened, and everyone was going to pretend that it didn't.” - C.V. Hunt

85. “I’m the sexiest of them all! - Carol” - Matthew Harvel Leeth

86. “Your cunning has proved to be that of Cain. I grant you power over the Hellmouth. May Samael take my revenge." The thing said with a bitter look and a voice that seemed to be many.” - Georgina Morales

87. “When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.” - Algernon Blackwood

88. “When Lisa awoke she was back in the cell on the floor covered in her own blood, dirt, and urine. And that was only day 1.” - Mia Moore

89. “Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.” - Truman Capote

90. “Blood began to flow, at first cautiously, as if embarrassed by its appearance; a few thin red lines exploring the gravitational trajectory of its new terrain. Now it flowed faster, steadily staining her pale flesh a horrific red.” - R.D. Ronald

91. “Love, really? We're vampires, not teenagers. Lust is for the weak.” - Ashley Madau

92. “=> When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.=> Never tell your problems to anyone...20% don't care and the other 80% are glad you have them.=> It's true that we don't know what we've got until we loseit, but it's also true that we don't know what we've beenmissing until it arrives.” - Stephenie Meyer

93. “I like stories about supervillains. They teach children that you can accomplish great things even when the whole world is against you.” - G.D. Falksen

94. “It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: "The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes!” - Hunter S. Thompson

95. “The dead are the past and we cannot escape the past. Without the past there will be no future.” - M.R. Gott

96. “You’re just spooked. It’s Halloween; we’re all kind of spooked. That’s just the way it is. - Tory” - Matthew Leeth

97. “Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with the greasily smooth floors and the degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superseded-run back, before we had seen what we did see, and before our minds were burned with something which will never let us breathe easily again!” - H.P. Lovecraft

98. “Julian tried to keep a pleasant smile on his face, though already it felt strained. He was uncomfortable with people who used the word blessed as a part of their everyday speech. The implication was that God was intervening in the minutiae of their lives, hanging around and helping them with their jobs or children or household chores as though He had nothing better to do. Maybe it was true, Julian thought wryly. Maybe that was why there were wars and murders and earthquakes and hurricanes. God was too busy helping real estate agents find new listings to deal with those other issues.” - Bentley Little

99. “I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei.       Plague carrier.       Living death.       Drainer of life.       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could.       Vampire.        And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.” - Melika Dannese Lux

100. “Evil knows its time to end is soon at hand, hence why it is more than determined to succeed.” - Milkweed L. Augustine

101. “The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-built, sprawling, resembling a hunting-lodge. But there's no friendliness to it. There is something ominous and forbidding about its look, so dark, so forgotten, so secretive-looking. The kind of a house that has a maw to swallow with - a one-way house, that you feel will never disgorge any living thing that enters it. Leprous in the moonlight festering on its roof. And the two round sworls of light played by the heads of the car against its side, intersecting, form a pear-shaped oval that resembles a gleaming skull. ("Jane Brown's Body")” - Cornell Woolrich

102. “The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there's suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it. A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that already unhealthy-looking, flabby. A dead hand - the hand of a skeleton - on a still-living body. A body he was dancing with only a few minutes ago. A rank odor, a smell of decay, of the grave and of the tomb, hovers about the two of them now.A woman points from the next table, screams. She's seen it, too. She hides her face, cowers against her companion's shoulder, shudders. Then he sees it too. His collar's suddenly too tight for him. Others see it, one by one. A wave of impalpable horror spreads centrifugally from that thing lying there in the blazing electric light on O'Shaughnessy's table. The skeleton at the feast! ("Jane Brown's Body")” - Cornell Woolrich

103. “I tried to say something cool, wound up stammering something like, “WANNA YOU WANNA WEENIE ME?” The end kind of trailed off in a shrill, choking warble.” - David Wong

104. “If you let something scare you to death, then the worst has happened.” - D.E. Athkins

105. “The door of the judge's house was opened to him by a huge, bearded man who informed the reporter in a conversational tone that if he did not leave the village immediately he would not leave it with his arms unbroken.” - Phil Rickman

106. “Darkness is a defining characteristic of Rotters. But it’s worthy to remember that darkness is just that—it’s dark—and what is being concealed in the dark is not just the horrible and fearsome, it’s also the inspirational and moving. Horror means nothing without happiness; dark means nothing without light. Rotters may make you feel scared, but hopefully it will also make you simply feel. It’s that kind of book, or at least I hope it is.” - Daniel Kraus

107. “The questions push me further into the space in between, the place where my madness lays waiting for me. I struggle with each question, determined to extract some sort of answer, an explanation for everything that has happened so far. But no answers come and I’m forced to acknowledge the feeling lodged between my two worldsTerror.” - Christine Fonseca

108. “This whole goddamn house stinks of ghosts.” - J.D. Salinger

109. “For an instant Harry imagined... Just for an instant, before his imagination blew a fuse and called an emergency shut down and told him never to imagine that again.” - Eliezer Yudkowsky

110. “This is indeed one of the true tragedies of lycanthropy, that the subject of such evil pacts and nefarious deeds is ignorant of his place in the plot that besieges this humble hamlet.”– Aleister Creed, WitchfinderThe Trial of John Goode by Gabriel Salmon and Thome Ward” - Gabriel Salmon

111. “Violet carved her hate into her flesh one name at a time.” - Damien Walters Grintalis

112. “Behind everyday reality, there is a deeper reality so cruel that it condemns to death those who crime is no greater than the pursuit of their own curiosity.("Shem-El-Nessim: An Inspiration In Perfume")” - Chris Bell

113. “I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.” - Mark Lawrence

114. “Sparks are warm while they last.” - Susan Price

115. “Run, sweetheart, run.” - Rae Hachton

116. “For there has never been a story nearly as tragic as the one of Frankenstein, except for that of Johnny Heart and his Francesca Valentine.” - Rae Hachton

117. “I can smell your blood now. I can smell it in every room of the house.” - Jolie du Pre

118. “No wonder that the ghost and goblin stories had a new zest. No wonder that the blood of the more timid grew chill and curdled, that their flesh crept, and their hearts beat irregularly, and the girls peeped fearfully over their shoulders, and huddled close together like frightened sheep, and half-fancied they beheld some impish and malignant face gibbering at them from the darkling corners of the old room. By degrees my high spirits died out, and I felt the childish tremors, long latent, long forgotten, coming over me. I followed each story with painful interest; I did not ask myself if I believed the dismal tales. I listened and fear grew upon me - the blind, irrational fear of our nursery days. ("Horror: A True Tale")” - John Berwick Harwood

119. “Henry,' at last said one, again dipping the spoon into the flaming spirit, 'hast thou read Hoffman?' 'I should think so,' said Henry. 'What think you of him?' 'Why, that he writes admirably; and, moreover, what is more admirable - in such a manner that you see at once he almost believes that which he relates. As for me, I know very well that when I read him of a dark night, I am obliged to creep to bed without shutting my book, and without daring to look behind me.' 'Indeed; then you love the terrible and fantastic?' 'I do,' said Henry. ("The Dead Man's Story” - Hain Friswell

120. “And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water - things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other - forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. ("The House And The Brain")” - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

121. “The other dark places,' Evan whispered. Visions of tunnels of earth and stone, caves and streams entered his head. It was far beneath them. He knew it was real and it was down there, waiting.” - Mary G. Thompson

122. “In the real world, babysitting is a groovy way for young people to learn responsibility (and earn a little pocket money). In the Terrorverse, it's a plot device used to kill teenagers.” - Seth Grahame-Smith

123. “From this moment on, nothing is what it seems. You're not a human being, you're a character- and filmmakers are doing everything in their power to kill you even now. Supernatural powers and curses are real, and numbers like 666 and 237 can kill you just as easily as a butch knife.Log cabins are slaughterhouses, cornstalks are antennas for evil, and aliens never, ever come in peace.” - Seth Grahame-Smith

124. “So I suggest you stick close, pay attention, and avoid breaking the Terrorverse's only commandment: Thou shall not be stupid.” - Seth Grahame-Smith

125. “if you're a teenaged babysitter caring for a mute toddler in a remote Maine cabin during a once-in-a-century blizzard while and escaped killers (bearing a strange resemblance to the handicapped boy you and your friends bulled of an embankment and left for dead all those years ago) roams the woods, you're probably in a horror movie.” - Seth Grahame-Smith

126. “Goodreads.com is actually about fiction not dreading goo. But I have a profile there, anyway...” - Michael A. Arnzen

127. “A kiss is such an amazing thing -- So simple, so complex. The only human act that gives while it receives. Mouth to mouth, it almost seems the eating of one another. Maybe that’s all we are, food for each other. Why, I believe there’s a poem in there somewhere. Another kiss to inspire my muse, Desirée, and I’ll tell you something else you don’t know.” - Ken Goldman

128. “Eu gargalhei até espantar o horror para fora de mim.” - Filipe Russo

129. “Don't tell me it's going to fucking be okay! I am not okay with being that fucker's pinata!” - Nenia Campbell

130. “The first handkerchief was tied to a second, yellow handkerchief. He fed both through the window and kept pulling. Attached to it was a red one. Then a green one. “Go away, you goddamn clown!” Jenny ordered. But Benny the Clown continued to pull out handkerchief after handkerchief. Five…ten…fifteen…then… That’s not a handkerchief.” - Blake Crouch

131. “When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn’t have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft’s works and what I learned about his myth as the “recluse of Providence” that made me think, “That’s for me!” I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I’m not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t discovered Lovecraft.” - Thomas Ligotti

132. “The chandelier was wearing on its rubber support and the crack at the side of the ceiling hold was getting bigger. “One day that’s going to fall on us and spear you through the heart,” he said. I turned to kiss him on the shoulder and closed my eyes.” - Kate Chisman

133. “I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wishing them to come. They might have wished and wished for an unnatural evil to fall upon them but, for a while at least, nothing happened. Then the wishing stopped, the old wishes were forgotten yet at the same time gathered in strength, distilling themselves into a potent formula (who can say!), until one day the terrible season began. Because had they really told the truth, this artistic crowd might also have expressed what a sense of meaning (although of a negative sort), not to mention the vigorous thrill (although of an excruciating type), this season of unnatural evil had brought to their lives.("Gas Station Carnivals")” - Thomas Ligotti