To feel is the most terrifying thing in this society.

I want them [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

When one is gripped by excruciating physical pain, one is always shocked at just how frightful it can be.

Reality in strong doses frightens.

Far from securing order, terror intensifies disorder and social disintegration. Terror, the most extreme form of power, is the least effective, and rulers employ it to the detriment of their own authority.

The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the human mind—something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible elements.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.