“The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there'd be no show at all.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than "I'll never leave you.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“I was born alive. Isn’t that punishment enough?”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“So discretion was the by-word. They would take meant only when the hunger became crippling, and only then victims who were unlikely to be missed. They would refrain from infecting others, so as no to advertise their presence. if one was found, no other would risk exposure by going to his aid. Hard laws o live by, but not as hard as the consequences of breaking them. The rest was patience, and they were well used to that. Their liberator would come eventually, if they could only survive the wait. Few had any clue as to the shape he'd come in. But all knew his name. Cabal, he was called. Who Unmade Midian. Their prayers were full of him. On the next wind, let him come. If not now, then tomorrow. They might not have prayed so passionately had they known what a sea change his coming would bring. They might not have prayed at all had the know they prayed to themselves. But these were revelations for a later day. For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night, the bereaved from crying out too loud, the young in summer from falling in love with the human. It was a life.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Her gaze went with her, into a room with walls of frozen earth, and a floor the same, the latter split from corner to corner, and a fissure opened in it from which a flame column rose four or five times the size of a man. There was bitter cold off it rather than heat, and no reassuring flicker in its heart. Instead its innards churned upon themselves, turning over and over some freight of stuff which she failed to recognize at first, but her appalled stare rapidly interpreted. There was a body in the fire, hacked limb from limb, human enough that she recognized it as flesh, but no more than that. Baphomet's doing presumably, some torment visited on a transgressor. Boone said the Baptizer's name even now, and she readied herself for sight of its face. She had it too, but from inside the flame, as the creature there--not dead, but alive, not Midian's subject, but its creator--rolled its head over in the turmoil of flame and looked her way. This was Baphomet. This diced and divided thing. Seeing its face, she screamed. No story or movie screen, no desolation, no bliss, had prepared her for the maker of Midian. Sacred it must be, as anything so extreme must be sacred. A thing beyond things. Beyond love or hatred or their sum, beyond the beautiful or the monstrous or their sum. Beyond, finally, her mind's power to comprehend or catalog.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night, the bereaved from crying out too loud, the young in summer from falling in love with the human.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Putting down the devil was the Lord’s own sport.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“The un-people, the anti-tribe, humanity’s sack unpicked and sewn together again with the moon inside.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“You want my advice!
Kiss the Devil, eat the worm. -- Jan de Mooy, Another Matter; or, Man Remade”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Born from different parents, they were siblings in death, destroyed by the same hand.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“—when the sun goes out and there’s only night, we’ll live on the earth. It’ll be ours.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“The wind was not invisible. It had a texture, as though it carried a weight of dust, the motes steadily gumming up her eyes and sealing her nose, finding its way into her underwear and up into her body by those routes too.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“All Darkness was one darkness in the end. Of heart or Heavens, one Darkness.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Or were they breed who had died from their half-life, caught in the sun, perhaps, or withered by longing?”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Among his memories of the whole and the human, sharpest was that of Decker.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“There were no chambers now along the passageway and consequently no lights. There was a glow up ahead, however—fitful and cold, but bright enough to illuminate both the ground she stumbled over, which was bare earth, and the silvery frost on the walls.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“It was bad enough that these creatures had children and art; that they might also have vision was too dangerous a thought to entertain.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Only once did Lori glimpse such an entity, supine on a mattress in the corner of its boudoir. It was naked, corpulent and sexless, its sagging body a motley of dark, oily skin and larval eruptions that seeped phosphorescence, soaking its simple bed.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Lost in the wasteland, Ashbery was found by a light flickering up from between the fractured paving stones. Its beams were bitterly cold, and sticky in a way light had no right to be, adhering to his sleeve and hand before fading away. Intrigued, he tracked its source from one eruption to another, each point brighter than the one before.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“ignorant of the place it had been and blind to where it was headed.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“So many masks. Was she the only one who had no secret life, no other self in marrow or mind?”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Here was a place sacred to the dead, who were not the living ceased, but almost another species, requiring rites and prayers that belonged uniquely to them.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than “I’ll never leave you.” What”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
“Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn't care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he'd had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes; sometimes women; even children. Ol' Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Cabal
Clive Barker
Born place: in Liverpool, The United Kingdom
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“I didn’t want you to apply just because I’m going to be in New York. Or hell, even worse, not apply because I’m going to be there. I was going to tell you in person. And then the scout shows up at the game tonight, and what was I supposed to do? My mom is freaking out; you’re freaking out.” He throws his hands in the air in frustration. “I’ve totally fucked this up.”
It hits me then, the truth of the situation. He made his decision about Columbia on his own, and he wanted me to be able to do the same. Of course.
Hell, if it hadn’t been for the storm bringing us together like it did, I probably would have turned down NYU rather than risk going off to New York with him, and that’s the truth.
I drop my gaze to the ground and take a deep breath, cursing myself for being such an idiot.
“No, you haven’t,” I say at last, raising my eyes to meet his confused ones.
“Haven’t what?”
“Fucked it up.” I take a tentative step toward him. “I get it now. God, Ryder. Why do you have to be so perfect?”
“Perfect? I’ve been in love with you for so long now, and I’ve never managed to get it right, not once.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning. “News flash--I think you’ve finally got it this time.”
His smile makes my heart leap. “Do you have any idea what was going through my head when you first told me about NYU? I couldn’t believe it. It was like…like a gift fell right into my lap. Like winning the lottery. All this time I thought going off to New York would mean leaving you behind. And now--”
“Now we both better get in,” I finish for him, though it probably wasn’t what he was going to say. I mean, he’s a shoo-in for Columbia. Perfect grades, high SATs, and a superstar quarterback the likes of which the Ivy League rarely sees. He’s every college admissions director’s dream. But me? If I get into NYU, it’ll be by the skin of my teeth. Because they want geographic diversity or something lame like that. I’m nothing special.
“Where will you go if you don’t get into NYU?” he asks.
“Where else?” I say. “Ole Miss, with Lucy and Morgan.”
“Then Ole Miss is my backup too. Here’s the thing, Jem. I’m going wherever you’re going--whether it’s New York or Oxford. I’m not missing my chance this time.”
― Kristi Cook, quote from Magnolia
“I felt ashamed."
"But of what? Psyche, they hadn't stripped you naked or anything?"
"No, no, Maia. Ashamed of looking like a mortal -- of being a mortal."
"But how could you help that?"
"Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
“What do we owe for what has come before us, the previous generation?... The problem is that we can never enter this shadow world in order to make payment.”
― David Vann, quote from Aquarium
“God’s grace is all around us if we choose to see it. Put on the glasses of gratitude, and you’ll be surprised how much your attitude is changed by a new perspective.”
― quote from Grace, Not Perfection: Embracing Simplicity, Celebrating Joy
“a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
Alcools
The Russia House
Simple Genius
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Selected Poems
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