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Dark Quotes

“We live in a dark time. Books are as dark as what is available to teenagers through the media every day.”

Book Dark Media Available Teenager Dark Times

Author:Tamora Pierce

“A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up with. You've got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I'm not like that and I've realised that I don't need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not.”

People Thinking Needs Trying Book Black Dark Dangerous Crime Realised

Author:Ian Rankin

“The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst - for me, at least - is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything that I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.”

Source: Nightmares & Dreamscapes

“A good book is a lighthouse; a wise man is a lighthouse; conscience is a lighthouse; compassion is a lighthouse; science is a lighthouse! They all show us the true path! Keep them in your life to remain safe in the rocky and dark waters of life!”

Men Book Shows Water Dark Compassion Path Wise Safe Conscience Good Book Lighthouse Water Of Life Dark Water

Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan

“I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it. Otherwise, it's dull. So when I embarked into the world of picture books, my first thought was to do something about the dark.”

Thinking World Firsts I Can Book Stories Dark Terrible Dull Picture Books

Author:Daniel Handler

“About the book of Job: If it were today, God might be asking "How does DNA carry traits? How are instincts passed on in animals? How does consciousness arise in the human body and brain, and what is consciousness? What is dark matter? How did the big bang happen? Why does the speed of light appear to be absolute? Is cold fusion possible? How do you program a TV remote control?”

“By Chivalries as tiny, A Blossom, or a Book, The seeds of smiles are planted- Which Blossom in the dark.”

Book Dark Kindness Seeds Tiny Chivalry

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)

“STARING INTO THE ABYSS by Richard Thomas is an outstanding book, a grim tapestry of broken lives and shattered dreams, of dark fantasies and dark reflections. It's one of the better single-author collections I've had the pleasure to read in recent years, and as such, gets my highest recommendation. It's also a fine testament to a talent I suspect we are going to be hearing a lot more from, and soon.”

“When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.”

Book Dies Dark Talent Forgotten Corners Compare Tempted

Author:Denis Diderot

“The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods.”

Men Book Earth Night Dark Sky Moon Terror Eclipse

Book:THE DREAMLANDS SERIES: 20+ Gruesome Tales of Terror in One Premium Edition: The Dream Cycle: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond, The Nameless City, Ex Oblivione, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Polaris, Hypnosäó_

Source: THE DREAMLANDS SERIES: 20+ Gruesome Tales of Terror in One Premium Edition: The Dream Cycle: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond, The Nameless City, Ex Oblivione, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Polaris, Hypnosäó_

“[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop... You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh!'”

Knows Kind Book Young Dark Growing Up Growing Dangerous Exciting Library Stealing Sexually Bookshops

Author:Stephen Fry

“If you don't encourage healthy sexual expression in public, you get unhealthy sexual expression in private. If you attempt to suppress sex in books, magazines, movies and even everyday conversation, you aren't helping to make sex more private, just more hidden. You're keeping sex in the dark. What we've tried to do is turn on the lights.”

Ifs Book Helping Light Turns Sex Dark Expression Healthy Conversation Everyday Magazines Turn-on Unhealthy

Author:Hugh Hefner

“I thought why not write a kind of mystery, murder, thriller book, but use romance language where the language plays completely against the very dark subject matter, that very strange murderous plot, but use that Harlequin Romance language.”

Writing Kind Book Matter Play Use Romance Language Dark Mystery Subjects Strange Murder Plot Why Not Subject Matter Thrillers Harlequin

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“It's much harder to say "I'm going to kill three of the biggest characters in your universe in a gruesome bloodbath." There can be a lot of differing opinions in a mainstream comic book, you know? "Rogue would never do this!" But I can say, "No, Rogue suffered the death of Charles Xavier and it broke her down and she stumbled into a dark place and she started fixating on the Scarlet Witch as the cause of it all" which, there is a logical chain of events that lead to the Scarlet Witch. And in the confusion, she thought Wanda was up to doing it again and she did what she thought was best.”

“Blindsight is excellent. It's state-of-the-art science fiction: smart, dark and it grabs you by the throat from page one. Like a C J Cherryh book it makes you feel the danger of the hostile environment (or lack of one) out there. And it plays with some fascinating possibilities in human development, and some disconcerting ideas about human consciousness. What else can I say? Thanks for giving me the privilege of reading this.”

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”

Source: Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Book, this Holy Book, on every line, Mark'd with the seal of high divinity, On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love Divine, and with the eternal heraldry And signature of God Almighty stamp'd From first to last; this ray of sacred light, This lamp, from off the everlasting throne, Mercy took down, and in the night of time Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow; And evermore beseeching men With tears And earnest sighs, to read, believe and live.”

“Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825, there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes on the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillion tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillion, as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color.”

Source: Alice of Old Vincennes (Volume 1 of 2 ) (EasyRead Super Large 24pt Edition)

“I sat staring up at a shelf in my workroom from which thirty-one books identically dressed in neat dark green leather stared back at me with a sort of cold hostility like children who resent their parents. Don't stare at us like that! they said. Don't blame us if we didn't turn out to be the perfection you expected. We didn't ask to be brought into the world.”

Ifs World Children Said Book Turns Asks Parent Dark Cold Perfection Blame Green Expected Staring Thirty Sat They Said Shelves Hostility Leather Neat Resent

Book:A Kind of Magic

Source: A Kind of Magic

“First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.”

Firsts Book Dream Reading Dark Pure Leap Publication Books And Reading

Book:Herself

Source: Herself

“Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.”

Book Dark Our Lives Journey Woods Midway Dark Woods

Book:The Purgatorio

Source: The Purgatorio

“This is a strange book: visionary and dark. It stutters out a kind of music: repeated phrases which accumulate errors and mutate as they go like chromosomes or, as Woodward puts it better, 'visible fissile ribbons.' It's as if we were present for the moments of creation and extinction. Uncanny Valley is ominous and beautiful.”

Ifs Kind Book Moments Beautiful Dark Creation Strange Errors Phrases Visible Valleys Extinction Visionaries Ribbons Uncanny Ominous Chromosomes

Author:Rae Armantrout

“Let it be a settled principle in our minds, in reading the Bible, that Christ is the central sun of the whole book. So long as we keep Him in view, we shall never greatly err in our search for spiritual knowledge. Once losing sight of Christ, we shall find the whole Bible dark and full of difficulty.”

Mind Long Book Whole Spiritual Reading Christ Dark Views Principles Sun Losing Sight Difficulty Spiritual Knowledge Reading The Bible

Book:Bible Commentary - The Gospel of Luke

Source: Bible Commentary - The Gospel of Luke

“I really only write about inner landscapes and most people don't see them, because they see practically nothing within, because they think that because it's inside, it's dark, and so they don't see anything. I don't think I've ever yet, in any of my books, described a landscape. There's really nothing of the kind in any of them. I only ever write concepts. And so I'm always referring to "mountains" or "a city" or "streets." But as to how they look: I've never produced a description of a landscape. That's never even interested me.”

People Thinking Writing Looks Kind Book Dark Cities Streets Mountain Concepts Landscape Description Referring

Author:Thomas Bernhard

“Neiman's book is written with considerable flair, as many critics have already noted, but it possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: moral seriousness. Her argument builds a powerful emotional force, a sense of deep inevitability. . . . It is not often that a work of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful and brave.”

Book Force Felt Dark Powerful Quality Moral Written Emotional Argument Brave Critics Valuable Conclusion Hopeful Seriousness Inevitability Flair

Author:Mark Kingwell

“When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel.”

Thinking Book Dark Fire Wind Rain Window Driving Voyages Sleet

Book:The Long Voyage

Source: The Long Voyage

“I had a book that was given to me as a kid that was called 'Faeries.' It was this dark, sinister book with pictures that used to scare me because they were these creepy little creatures. But, I was always really drawn to that fantasy world, more than a sci-fi world, in terms of outer space stuff.”

World Littles Book Kids Used Given Stuff Term Dark Space Fantasy Creatures Scare Sci Fi Creepy Faerie Sinister Outer Space Fantasy Worlds

Author:Anna Silk

“Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.”

Humans Kind Has Beens Book Matter Character Age Night Reading Dark Impossible Losing Casts Terror Driven Lists Attractive Vivid Sympathetic Youngsters Dark Matter

Author:Stephen King

“Good writing and dark wit always excite me and they come together thrillingly in this book. It has a quiet grip on the strangeness of the interior and exterior worlds of love and politics. I delighted in the writing and the scope.”

World Writing Book Together Dark Quiet Wit Interiors Scope Delighted Good Writing Exterior Strangeness

Author:Jenny Diski

“The Singapore judicial system's shameful recourse to using torture - in the form of caning - to punish crimes that should be misdemeanors is indicative of a blatant disregard for international human rights standards, one of the defendants said that sentencing day was the darkest day of his life, but in reality every day that Singapore keeps caning on its books is a dark day for the country's international reputation.”

“It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.”

Writing Book Hard Difficult Dark Safe

Author:Joan Didion

“Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.”

People Book Reading Dark Cheerful Adverbs

Author:Daniel Handler

“The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.”

Thinking Writing Kind Book Self Facts Together Imagination Dark Emotion Accounts Regard Conclusion Designer Obscure Cement

Book:Works

Source: Works

“As theories increased, simple medicines..were forgotten, at least in the politer nations. ...Medical books, were immensely multiplied,...(towards) an abstruse science, quite out of reach of ordinary men.”

Men Book Age Nations Dark Simple Theory Ordinary Medicine Forgotten Medical Dark Ages Ordinary Man

Author:John Wesley

“I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.”

Writing Trying Believe Book House Dark Tragedy Sand Fog

Author:Andre Dubus

“Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.”

Book Moments Stories Remember Mother Father Dark Childhood Tales Fairy Fairy Tale Recalls Bedtime Bedtime Stories

Author:Paul Auster

“I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read '11/22/63.'”

Long Book Three Dark Walks Half Taught Kings Forgotten Vacation Trapped Long Walks Early 20s Family Vacation

Author:Lev Grossman

“There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape. I don't want to think of myself as a guy who's written a bunch of books. The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Want Book Guy Sound Dark Struggle Written Letters Distance Bunch Prose Grammar Hesitation

Author:Nicholson Baker

“You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.”

Knows Persons Book Happens Certain Dark One Thing Boat Voyages Trembling

Author:James A. Baldwin

“For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.”

Writing Made Book Stories Night Waiting Dark My Own Sleep Behinds Childhood Sitting Hated Ran Adulthood Made Up Stories

Author:Anne Tyler

“Paste magazine has served as a tremendous window into culture for my house. I can think of no other publication that provides such critical yet entertaining thoughts on music, movies, books and gaming as Paste. My mailbox would be a dark place indeed without it.”

Thinking I Can Book Would Be Culture House Dark Window Critical Magazines Entertaining Publication Gaming Dark Places Mailboxes

Author:Derek Webb

“After my first novel, my mother said to me, 'Why don't you make your writing more funny? You're so funny in person.' Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don't know, but something about what she said was true. 'Yes, why don't I?' Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I've done has a comedic edge to it.”

Knows Writing Firsts Persons Said Book Done Mother Dark Novel Seven Edges Comedic

Author:Jonathan Ames

“If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror.”

Ifs Looks Made Book Three Literature Stars Dark Numbers Fame Pages Mirrors Filled Visuals Trapped Blank Tigers Cubes Blank Pages

Author:Guillermo Cabrera Infante

“Let's see, now... in HOGFATHER there are a number of stabbings, someone's killed by a man made of knives, someone's killed by the dark, and someone just been killed by a wardrobe. It's a book about the magic of childhood. You can tell.”

Men Made Book Dark Numbers Magic Childhood Knives Wardrobe Stabbing Magic Of Childhood

Author:Terry Pratchett

“'The Hobbit' was one of the first biggish books I ever read. I remember vividly the 'riddles in the dark' passage, and it meant a lot to me to finally get to play it after all these years.”

Years Firsts Book Play Remember Dark Passages Riddle

Author:Andy Serkis

“Maybe in writing about and through trauma it was therapeutic in a way, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I was in a very dark place, in lots of foreign cities, far from New York. A lot of personal trials and tribulations took over my life in those years. It might be some time before I see what therapeutic function this book did serve. But for now, it's not even easy to read from it.”

Way Feels Writing Years Book Might Easy Dark Cities New York Function Trauma Trials Tribulation Therapeutic Dark Places Trials And Tribulations

Author:Porochista Khakpour

“I am not sure I knew what I was doing, writing an "apocalypse" novel, when I started this book. Now that the book is done, I can own that I have in fact written an apocalypse novel, one that speculates on a dark, dark future. Why I did it, I really don't know - every time people read my work they comment on its darkness, its sadness.”

People Knows Writing I Can Book Done Facts Dark Darkness Novel Written Sadness Not Sure Comment Apocalypse

Author:Edan Lepucki

“Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.”

“The reason why so many of my photographs in the book were taken in stairwells and corridors was that that was the only bit of spare space available and, in some cases, the only place where there was enough light to see anything. Even then, it was often so dark that I couldn't tell which gender my subject was (not that I particularly cared) and too dark, before the era of autofocus, to focus. I had to find a light (or carry a torch) and pre-focus.”

Book Reason Enough Light Bits Dark Space Cases Taken Focus Subjects Photograph Available Gender Eras Reason Why Spares Torches Corridors

Author:Derek Ridgers

“When I was a book editor, I got used to being told that my tastes were dark or edgy. These are not words that would've occurred to me, but I was told that enough that I have to believe it's true - that I like things that some other people find off-putting or upsetting. My job is to publish stuff that I really, really care about. That might mean that it doesn't sit well with everybody.”

People Believe Wells Mean Book Enough Might Care Jobs Used Stuff Dark Taste Upset Editors Publish Edgy

Author:Lorin Stein