“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”

“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.”

“We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.”

“If only we would wake from (these) states of oblivion with some certain sense that there was no mystery to life at all, that cruelty was purely impersonal, but we don't.”

“Shakespeare can show us what we are like at moments when we cannot see ourselves.”

“Unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.”