“No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“She had opened a door... and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge... Pain had made a sadist of her.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“In moments they would be here — the ones Kircher had called the Cenobites, theologians of the Order of the Gash. Summoned from their experiments in the higher reaches of pleasure, to bring their ageless heads into a world of rain and failure.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessy happy, weren't they? To Kristy this had always seemed self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn't blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses.
Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness.
Even winter - the hardest season, the most implacable - dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Le stagioni si agognano l’un l’altra, come uomini e donne, in modo da essere guarite dai loro eccessi. La primavera, se si protrae per più di una settimana oltre il suo tempo naturale, comincia a patire l’assenza dell’estate che ponga fine ai giorni della promessa perpetua. L’estate dal suo canto comincia ben presto a invocare qualcosa che plachi la sua calura e il più ubere degli autunni alla lunga si stanca della sua generosità e reclama una rapida, aspra gelata che lo sterilizzi. Persino l’inverno, la più dura delle stagioni, la più implacabile, sogna all’apparire di febbraio la fiamma che presto lo scioglierà. Ogni cosa si stanca con il tempo e comincia a cercare un suo contrario che la salvi da se stessa. Così agosto cedette il posto a settembre e pochi se ne lamentarono.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Gli parve che l'unica soluzione potesse essere la follia, nessuna speranza se non la perdita della speranza.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“It was that sleep itself—the act of closing the eyes and relinquishing control of her consciousness—was something she was temperamentally unsuited to.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. So August gave way to September and there were few complaints.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“When, finally, she did sleep, it was the slumber of a watcher and waiter. Light, and full of sighs.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“The bare bulb in the middle of the room dimmed and brightened, brightened and dimmed again. It had taken on the rhythm of the bell, burning its hottest on each chime. In the troughs between the chimes the darkness in the room became utter; it was as if the world he had occupied for twenty-nine years had ceased to exist. Then the bell would sound again, and the bulb burn so strongly it might never have faltered, and for a few precious seconds he was standing in a familiar place, with a door that led out and down and into the street, and a window through which-had he but the will (or strength) to tear the blinds back-he might glimpse a rumor of morning.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Do you understand?” the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy—the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. “Do you even know who we are?” it asked.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Sin lágrimas, por favor. Es un desperdicio de buen sufrimiento.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“So intent was Frank upon solving the puzzle of Lemarchand’s box that he didn’t hear the great bell begin to ring.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Everywhere, in the wreckage around him, he found evidence to support the same bitter thesis: that he had encountered nothing in his life—no person, no state of mind or body—he wanted sufficiently to suffer even passing discomfort for.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Con el tiempo, todas las cosas se cansan y comienzan a buscar algún oponente que las salve de sí mismas.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Odiaba las fiestas. Las sonrisas pegadas con engrudo para tapar el pánico, las miradas que había que interpretar y lo peor de todo: la conversación.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“He spent three months in a wash of depression and self-pity that bordered the suicidal. But even that solution was denied him by his new found nihilism. If nothing was worth living for it followed , didn't it , that there was nothing worth dying for either.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“No passion, only sudden lust, and just as sudden indifference.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“He had certainly set his eyes on more voluptuous creatures , but something about her lack of glamour engaged him. Such women were in his experience often more entertaining company than beauties like Julia. They could be flattered or bullied into acts the beauties would never countenance and be grateful for the attention.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Everything tires with time , and starts to seek some opposition , to save it from itself.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“Allí el placer era dolor, y viceversa. Y él lo conocía tan bien que era como sentirse en casa.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessly happy, weren’t they?”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
“She was indeed tired , as she'd claimed , but it wasn't the cooking that exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for he damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She'd called them friends once , these half-wits , with their poor jokes and poorer pretensions.”
― Clive Barker, quote from The Hellbound Heart
Clive Barker
Born place: in Liverpool, The United Kingdom
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“Howard got sex-crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab's Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty's yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes's--one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises' fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself.”
― James Ellroy, quote from The Big Nowhere
“I continued working without a break, but in the middle of the third story...I felt myself tiring more than if I had been working on a novel. The same thing happened with the fourth. In fact, I did not have the energy to finish them. Now I know why: The effort involved in writing a short story is as intense as beginning a novel, where everything must be defined in the first paragraph: structure, tone, style, rhythm, length, and sometimes even the personality of a character. All the rest is the pleasure of writing, the most intimate, solitary pleasure one can imagine, and if the rest of one's life is not spent correcting the novel, it is because the same iron rigor needed to begin the book is required to end it. But a story has no beginning, no end: Either it works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, my own experience, and the experience of others, shows that most of the time it is better for one's health to start again in another direction, or toss the story in the wastebasket. Someone, I don't remember who, made the point with this comforting phrase: "Good writers are appreciated more for what they tear up than for what they publish.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from Strange Pilgrims
“I just... I always want more of you. I feel greedy, in a way. I just want to kiss you more, and touch you more. Like you said, it's dangerous. I feel like you're a drug, and I'm getting addicted to you.”
― Jasinda Wilder, quote from Falling into Us
“Weak people let their pain choke them to a slow, emotional death. Strong people use that pain, Margo. They use it as fuel.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow
“I decided that for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation."
As James listened to her speak, he felt something well up inside him as it had never done before. If he could, he would listen to her speak forever. If he could, he would join that nation she spoke of.”
― Yaa Gyasi, quote from Homegoing
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