Helen Marshall > Quotes

“Every writer dreams of a perfect language. Every writer dreams of a language that obeys, that comes to heel. For some this language is spare and pure, pared down to reveal essential truths without ornament or obfuscation. For others it is devilish and twisting, folding back over itself to create layers of meaning, shades of nuance.
A language that will survive through the ages.
A language that will crack open the heart of readers like a hazelnut.”
― Helen Marshall

“This kind of fantasy, in which “something is not quite right”, lends itself very well to Gothic sensibility, with its convoluted use of language and its tormented heroes. And then there is an element of irrationality built into the rational and, coming from a Spanish background, I interpret this as surrealism, for me this is a major element I recognize in weird writing, and one that is present in my own understanding of the weird.”
― Helen Marshall, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4

“Weird fiction is a strange beast, an eclectic genre (or subgenre). It originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through the works of authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, and M. R. James, and has since developed over the course of the last hundred years to encompass new writers such as China Miéville, M. John Harrison and others. Weird fiction is notable for its generic uncertainty; it exists at the boundary between science fiction and horror—perhaps—or between literary fiction and horror—perhaps—or between Lovecraft and whatever happens to be floating close to hand at any given moment—perhaps!”
― Helen Marshall, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4

“I like to think of weird fiction as an unceasing distortion and buckling of ambient space and time; where plot, theme, atmosphere and voice coalesce. Hence, the lens from which you view the world is askew and occluded. A feeling. A mood. A sense of dislocation.”
― Helen Marshall, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4

“I’ve heard the voice which whispers, you will die, and I’m not afraid; for to me it whispers sweetly, come to me, beautiful child, and I shall cradle you as you sleep, I shall watch over your dreaming and you shall at last be safe.”
― Helen Marshall, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“a kind of story interested in using the language of dreams and fragments, vague impressions, snatches of scientific discourse, in order to interrogate the nature of reality.”
― Helen Marshall, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4