Richard Matheson Quotes

Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, now, search your soul, lovie – is the vampire so bad?

He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into that hideous coma, to sink then into death and, perhaps, return to sterile, awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved.

That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.

"Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from "The Conqueror")"

Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?
His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.

In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

That which you believe becomes your world.

Miniture protoplasm, the dirty little bastard!

This day father hit in the chain again before it had light. I have to try to pull it out again. He said I was bad to come upstairs. He said never do that again or he would beat me hard. That hurts.

Life is a risk; so is writing. You have to love it.

Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well — as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence. What had only been imagination in life, now became tangible, each fantasy a full reality. I lived them all — while, at the same time, standing to the side, a witness to their, often, intimate squalor. A witness cursed with total objectivity.

The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on himself.

A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.

All these years, he thought, dreaming about a companion. Now I meet one and the first thing I do is distrust her, treat her crudely and impatiently. And yet there was really nothing else he could do. He had accepted too long the proposition that he was the only normal person left. It didn’t matter that she looked normal. He’d seen too many of them lying in their coma that looked as healthy as she. They weren’t, though, and he knew it. The simple fact that she had been walking in the sunlight wasn’t enough to tip the scales on the side of trusting acceptance. He had doubted too long. His concept of the society had become ironbound. It was almost impossible for him to believe that there were others like him. And, after the first shock had diminished, all the dogma of his long years alone had asserted itself.

Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.

A woman. Alive. In the daylight. He stood, mouth partly open, gaping at the woman. She was young, he could see now as she came closer; probably in her twenties. She wore a wrinkled and dirty white dress. She was very tan, her hair was red. In the dead silence of the afternoon Neville thought he heard the crunch of her shoes in the long grass. I’ve gone mad. The words presented themselves abruptly. He felt less shock at that possibility than he did at the notion that she was real. He had, in fact, been vaguely preparing himself for just such a delusion. It seemed feasible. The man who died of thirst saw mirages of lakes. Why shouldn’t a man who thirsted for companionship see a woman walking in the sun?