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Clive Barker

Clive Barker Quotes

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Famous Clive Barker Quotes

“If we have nothing to do but service our own pleasure - because society has taught us that's all we're worth and we're exiled from positions of authority from which we could actually shape society - then we just become hedonists. Eventually, despite how great it may look on Saturday night, come Monday morning there's just purposelessness.”

IfsLooksMayNightPleasureMorningPositionTaughtShapesAuthorityDespiteSaturdayMondayTaught UsSaturday NightMonday MorningPurposelessnessHedonist
Author:Clive Barker
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“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
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“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
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“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.”

PeopleIfsLifeGivingBelieveStillsPastI BelieveWishHealthHealthyThanksFilmmakerCelebrationNeuroticMournTombsCemeteryGraveyardCelebrate LifeSquatDay Of The Dead
Author:Clive Barker
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“The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink.”

IfsWantWritingArtWholeIndividualBeliefHurtVisionAudienceBloodConditionsPagesResponsePullingInkValidity
Author:Clive Barker
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“Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”

IfsEndsDreamLastsTurnsWeekPromiseSummerSpringSeasonsWinterHungerHardestFlamesHeatOppositionAutumnSweatPerpetualAcheTireCreepsFrostFebruaryQuenchFruitfulnessGentility
Book:The Hellbound Heart
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“Make your own worlds. Make your own laws. Make your own creations, your own star systems. Don't feel answerable to anyone, or as though you have to create after some preordained model. You don't have to write like myself, or King or Anne Rice: be yourself. Nothing is more wonderful than discovering a new voice, particularly if it happens to be your own.”

IfsWorldFeelsWritingHappensLawStarsVoiceWonderfulCreationKingsModelsBeing YourselfDiscoveringRiceMy Own World
Author:Clive Barker
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