Clive Barker Quotes

Lilia sighed. “Why me?” she said, still shaking. “Why should I have to tell it?”
“Because you’re the best liar,” Jerichau replied with a tight smile. “You can make it true.”

Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy.

He would be vigilant, but he would anticipate nothing, neither disaster nor revelation.
That was not to say he would give up looking to the future. True, he was just a Cuckoo: scared and weary and alone. But so, in the end were most of his tribe: it didn’t mean all was lost. As long as they could still be moved by a minor chord, or brought to a crisis of tears by scenes of lovers reunited; as long as there was room in their cautious hearts for games of chance, and laughter in the face of God, that must surely be enough to save them, at the last.
If not, there was no hope for any living thing.

She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquished his profession.

Non-fiction contains facts, fiction contains truth.

What can be imagined—
—need never be lost.

I've held a brain in my hands, which is an extraordinary experience.

“Don’t be sentimental,” he chided. “Memories aren’t enough.”
It was fruitless to argue the niceties of that: he was telling her that he was in pain; he didn’t want platitudes or metaphysics.

True joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.

Three is the number of those who do holy work;
Two is the number of those who do lover's work;
One is the number of those who do perfect evil
Or perfect good.

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

One of the reasons why I don't get on with most fantasy writing - enchanted sword fantasy writing - is because I think it's emotionally untrue. People behave in very simple ways, unparadoxical ways. What I'm trying to do is bring into fantasy - as I hope I've been able to bring to horror - a certain kind of emotional realism. People have mentioned sex as being a major part of my fiction. An awful lot of horror fiction simply never contained that kind of material. Which seems to me to be extraordinary because most horror fiction is about the body in some way or other, and therefore it should be about sensuality and eroticism every bit as much as it's about corruption.

As to the remnants of his army—those Seerkind who’d embraced the Prophet’s visions—they’d been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.

...Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you...
Old words; old rituals. But they still made sound commercial sense.
Talk of Power and Might would always attract an audience. Lords never went out of fashion.

We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.