Quotessence
Home / Authors / Clive Barker
Clive Barker

Clive Barker Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldHorrorIfsMenDreamWantKnowsPeopleThinkingWay

Famous Clive Barker Quotes

“We always think we are right, and - search as I have - there is no evil under the sun that somebody somewhere won't argue is actually a good, no idiocy that hasn't got its perfectly serious defenders, and no tyrant, past or present - no matter how bloody - without some bunch of zealot schmucks to defend him or his reputation till the last breath in their bodies - or preferably somebody else's.”

ThinkingMatterBodyLastsPastEvilSunSeriousBreathsArguingBunchReputationTyrantsBloodyDefendersIdiocyZealotSchmucks
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“I dreamed I spoke in another's language, I dreamed I lived in another's skin, I dreamed I was my own beloved, I dreamed I was a tiger's kin. I dreamed that Eden lived inside me, And when I breathed a garden came, I dreamed I knew all of Creation, I dreamed I knew the Creator's name. I dreamed--and this dream was the finest-- That all I dreamed was real and true, And we would live in joy forever, You in me, and me in you.”

RealDreamJoyNamesLanguageMy OwnForeverCreationGardenSkinsCreatorBelovedSpokesFinestTigersEden
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“Did I say that she was beautiful? I was wrong. Beauty is too tame a notion; it evokes only faces in magazines. A lovely eloquence, a calming symmetry; none of that describes this woman’s face. So perhaps I should assume I cannot do it justice with words. Suffice it to say that it would break your heart to see her; and it would mend what was broken in the same moment; and you would be twice what you’d been before.”

ShouldHeartMomentsWould BeBeautifulFacesJusticeBreakBrokenAssumingNotionLovelyMagazinesEloquenceEvokeSymmetryCalmingBreak Your Heart
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“We have great cities to visit: New York and Washington, Paris and London; and further east, and older than any of these, the legendary city of Samarkand, whose crumbling palaces and mosques still welcome travelers on the Silk road. Weary of cities? Then we’ll take to the wilds. To the islands of Hawaii and the mountains of Japan, to forests where Civil War dead still lie, and stretches of sea no mariner ever crossed. They all have their poetry: the glittering cities and the ruined, the watery wastes and the dusty; I want to show you them all. I want to show you everything.”

WantStillsWarShowsLyingCitiesSeaNew YorkMountainWasteEastLondonForestsWelcomeParisIslandsCivil WarJapanWearyTravelerRuinedHawaiiPalacesSilkLegendaryMosquesGreat CitiesCrumblingMarinersSilk RoadSamarkand
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.”

MenMayStatesMomentsAbleDiesCoursesStarsWaitingProcessPoorRichEventsPeriodsHappeningsInstrumentsWitSensesInvisibleWheelsSubtleMatesMechanismButterflyDeceivingSignalsPoor ManTranquilUnrestClusters
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.”

MenNeedsMayDifferentBeautifulCertainOrderStarsLove IsDarknessEventsLuckProfitInvisibleWheelsSpokesPhenomenonMechanismButterflyFinestPierce
Author:Clive Barker
Create image

“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.”

IfsWayShouldWellsEnoughHomePainStrongPleasureDarknessMysteryPoetGrewLoversWeakStrongerVicesVice VersaThreshold
Book:The Hellbound Heart
Create image

“Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.”

IfsWantFirstsMomentsStoriesSeemsAgeGrowsVoiceSpringConnectionsTalesThreadSingle WordNarrators
Book:Weaveworld
Create image