Chris Priestley > Quotes

“Give me a funeral over a wedding any day,.' said Uncle Montague with a sigh. 'The conversation is almost always superior.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“Does something amuse you?' asked Uncle Montague.
'I was merely reminding myself, Uncle, that I am getting too old to be so easily frightened by stories.'
'Really?' said Uncle Montague with a worrying degree of doubt in his voice. 'You think there is an age at which you might become immune to fear?”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“From the plough to paper, from the wheel to house, from tool handles to sailing ships. Man would have been nothing without trees.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“Just because something is told as a story and that story is part legend or myth, or feat of imagination, does not mean there is no truth in it.”
― Chris Priestley , Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“But she was no guardian angel. She was not trying to help me at all. She had been trying to claim me as she had claimed the lives of my fellow passengers.
She was the thing that remained forever unseen in my visions of her tales. She lurked near the bodies of those whose whose lives were so cruelly taken. She was there always, waiting.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“I stood a little self-consciously. I was of an age when I was still unsure of myself in such formal matters as greetings and partings.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“There are fewer things sadder than a poorly attended funeral.”
― Chris Priestley, The Dead of Winter

“Some people give off a scent of danger that the wise know and avoid and that the foolish are drawn to.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

“I am not a thief. I take only what I need,” he growled.
“Don’t we all, Swiss.”
― Chris Priestley, Mister Creecher

“She had the the most extraordinary capacity for falling asleep at a moments notice. Any kind of pause in the routine was an excuse for a nap. I swear she was more cat than human.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“The sea is a world no one truly knows...It is constantly changing, constantly moving. It is a living thing, never ageing, but never the same.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

“Because soldiers aren't really brave, they follow orders. Soldiers do as they told. They're not heroes. There are no real heroes, son. It depends on whose telling the story.”
― Chris Priestley, Anything That Isn't This

“For nothing is deader than a body that once had life and has it no more.”
― Chris Priestley, The Last of the Spirits

“Is this her death I'm looking at? Or her life? And which is worse?”
― Chris Priestley, The Last of the Spirits

“Because they wanted the thrill, said his grandfather. They wanted to feel terror. Fear makes you alive.”
― Chris Priestley, Anything That Isn't This

“In my confused state I wondered if I had not died and gone to hell. And if this was the case, I wished that I had been allowed more opportunities to sin, for this seemed a rather excessive judgement on what had been a frankly dull and blameless life. But I was not dead. I could see that now.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“I learned of the cruelty of man to his fellow man, and it did not come as any great surprise.”
― Chris Priestley, Mister Creecher

“I know I am probably foolish, but I rather hope that there are such wonders in the world. I think the world needs wonders.’ She blushed and giggled. ‘Even awful ones.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

“But why worship a tree?' I said.

'I can think of many things less deserving of worship,' he replied. 'Look at how long some trees have been alive. Think of what they have seen. Why, there are yew trees in churchyards that may be more than a thousand years old; older still than the ancient church nearby. Their roots are in one millennium and their branches in another.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“I would sometimes see them among the trees, as I did this particular day. They did not come near and never said a word. They stood silently among the shadows.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“But I am English and have spent my life at one of the finest schools in the country. I could take a beating.”
― Chris Priestley, Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror

“Sam's world grew and grew with each book he finished.”
― Chris Priestley, The Last of the Spirits

“I went to sea to forget her, but the sea is no place to forget. A man has so much to remember.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

“I felt worse now, for having known love and losing it, than I ever did in those hours of lonely despair.”
― Chris Priestley, Mister Creecher

“Writers were a strange sort; I knew that much from the newspapers.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“He seemed to spend half his time straddled between sleeping and waking these days. He wasn't entirely sure which was which, or which truth would dissapoint him most: to think this dismal dream was the best his imagination could come up with, or that this soulless puppet show was the real world.”
― Chris Priestley, Anything That Isn't This

“Sometimes the rational is no defense against the irrational.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth

“The school reports say you don't concentrate. But you don't concentrate because you are thinking. They don't understand that. They think intelligence is all about soaking up knowledge. But true intelligence- the intelligence that really counts- is the ability to interpret facts to make them you own.”
― Chris Priestley, Anything That Isn't This

“Age has more to do with experience than the number of years you may have walked the earth.”
― Chris Priestley, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

“Why is it childish to want something better? asked Frank sulkily. It's like pretending to be content is the same as actually being content. I'm not going to pre tent. - Frank”
― Chris Priestley, Anything That Isn't This