Quotes from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

-- The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Have you seen The Yellow Sign?”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“for I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Unsavoury as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard, honest work above.

("In The Court Of The Dragon")”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare; and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the Lake of Hali chilled my face.

("In The Court of the Dragon")”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I had never yet done such a thing in life, but now I felt a desire to mock.

("In The Court Of The Dragon")”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I do not deny that he was eccentric; the mania he had for keeping that cat and teasing her until she flew at his face like a demon, was certainly eccentric. I never could understand why he kept the creature, nor what pleasure he found in shutting himself up in his room with this surly, vicious beast. I remember once, glancing up from the manuscript I was studying by the light of some tallow dips, and seeing Mr. Wilde squatting motionless on his high chair, his eyes fairly blazing with excitement, while the cat, which had risen from her place before the stove, came creeping across the floor right at him. Before I could move she flattened her belly to the ground, crouched, trembled, and sprang into his face. Howling and foaming they rolled over and over on the floor, scratching and clawing, until the cat screamed and fled under the cabinet, and Mr. Wilde turned over on his back, his limbs contracting and curling up like the legs of a dying spider. He was eccentric.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Let the red dawn surmise What we shall do, When this blue starlight dies And all is through.”

(The Yellow Sign)”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile bend my thoughts wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: "To think that this also is a little ward of God!”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“A spring sun was shining on the rue St. Honore, as I ran down the church steps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violets from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Someone overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with my destruction.

I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began to dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. It began to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached a long way back - a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these. years: it was there though, and presently it would rise and confront me. But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could into the rue de Rivioli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys of the Cours la Reine.

("In The Court of the Dragon")”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking of what my architect's books say about the custom in early times to consecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, being finished sometimes half a century later, often did not get any blessing at all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St. Barnabe, and whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church, might have entered undetected, and taken possession of the west gallery. I had read of such things happening too, but not in works on architecture.

("In The Court Of The Dragon")”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“The mask of self-deception was not longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I have been forced to believe that neither the scholarly grace of my friend Elliott nor the buxom beauty of my friend Rowden have touched that heart of ice."

Elliot and Rowden, boiling with indignation, cried out, "And you!"

"I," said Clifford blandly, "do fear to tread where you rush in.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“The time had come, the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“What a precious triple donkey I had made of myself!”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“It is possible that his curiosity was piqued, for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most openly curious biped alive.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Shall I tell you all about her, cat? She is very beautiful – your mistress,’ he murmured drowsily, ‘and her hair is heavy as burnished gold. I could paint her – not on canvas – for I should need shades and tones and hues and dyes more splendid than the iris of a splendid rainbow. I could only paint her with closed eyes, for in dreams alone can such colours as I need be found. For her eyes, I must have azure from skies untroubled by a cloud – the skies of dreamland. For her lips, roses from the palaces of slumberland, and for her brow, snow-drifts from mountains which tower in fantastic pinnacles to the moons – oh, much higher than our moon here”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“The laws prohibiting suicide and providing punishment for any attempt at self-destruction have been repealed. The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through physical suffering or mental despair.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Really, old chap," he said, "I don't mean to run down a man you like, but for the life of me I can't see what the deuce you find in common with Mr. Wilde. He's not well bred, to put it generously; he is hideously deformed; his head is the head of a criminally insane person. You know yourself he's been in an asylum—”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“He had no ears. The artificial ones, which now stood out at an angle from the fine wire, were his one weakness. They were made of wax and painted a shell pink, but the rest of his face was yellow.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself,”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“It is possible that his curiosity was piqued, for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most openly curious biped alive. From twenty until death he tries to conceal it.”
― Robert W. Chambers, quote from The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

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