Richard Laymon > Quotes

“Except I think it feels more like an empty stomach than a broken heart. An aching hollowness that food can't cure. You know. You've felt it yourself, I bet. You hurt all the time, you're restless, you can't think straight, you sort of wish you were dead but what you really want is for everything to be the same as it was when you were still with her.. or him”
― Richard Laymon, Night in the Lonesome October

“Bring a vampire around, people start discovering religion.”
― Richard Laymon, The Stake

“Now you got us whammied with the curse of squirmy death.”
― Richard Laymon

“Horror writers are specialists in the worst-case scenario.”
― Richard Laymon

“The earth is a far a better place, now that she’s beneath it.”
― Richard Laymon, In the Dark

“My principles wouldn’t allow it.”
― Richard Laymon, Friday Night in Beast House

“The great times are often that way. In the middle of everything, you suddenly realize that you’re having a perfect, golden experience. And you realize how few they are. And how this one is bound to end too soon. You know that it will always be a wonderful memory, that the loss of it will give you a soft ache in the heart. This”
― Richard Laymon, Island

“Wielding a hammer, however, you’re at the very heart of the experience, being flooded with wonderful sensations that simply can’t be yours if you use a firearm. Now, you might be asking yourself how I came to discover the splendors of hammer attack. I’ll tell you. You won’t want to hear it, though.”
― Richard Laymon, The Museum of Horrors

“It's been my experience that worse-case scenarios are very rare indeed. Rare to the extend that you can almost count on them not happening.”
― Richard Laymon, The Traveling Vampire Show

“Just call me the Boswell of the Krull Gang.”
― Richard Laymon, Endless Night

“next week we have a bunch of horror writers coming from all over the world. That'll be one whole week, fully catered, and pre-paid bar. Those horror writers drink like fshes. Just their beer bill's gonna pay for the upkeep of this place for six months. Motel business is a great business to be in, my boy.”
― Richard Laymon, The Glory Bus

“She ran her tongue across her teeth. They felt scuzzy.”
― Richard Laymon, In the Dark

“Elliot? Your vampire’s name is Elliot? What’s his last name?’ ‘I don’t know. He’s never said. But even Elliot might not be his real name.’ ‘Why would anyone make up a name like that?”
― Richard Laymon, Bite

“Never become used to anything you love. It blunts the edge of appreciation.”
― Richard Laymon, The Cellar

“Being a guy isn’t always a picnic. To keep women from thinking we’re jerks or cowards – and consequently scorning or dumping us – we do what they want us to do. Even when we don’t want to do it. Even when we know better.”
― Richard Laymon, Night in the Lonesome October

“The sky, it was ashen and sober,’” Abilene intoned. “‘The leaves, they were crisped and seer. Twas night in the lonesome October of my most immemorial year.”
― Richard Laymon, Blood Games

“It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them the whole long boring story of how he’d gotten it at an estate sale in Hollywood. Some bimbo actress from the silent-screen days had supposedly slit her wrists while she was in the thing. ‘Cashed in her chips,’ Harold liked to say. ‘In this very tub.”
― Richard Laymon, Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

“I guess they’re having what you might call panic attacks. It’s an old place and smells a little musty. The hallways are sort of long and narrow. The exhibits are gory. The people are listening to some creepy, nasty stuff on their earphones. It apparently just overwhelms some of them, especially on a busy day when there might be some congestion in the rooms and hallways. You’ll have flippers, fainters and barfers every so often.’
‘It’s sounding more fun all the time.’ ‘Not as much fun as the heart attacks.’ ‘You get heart attacks?’
‘I don’t, they do. Not often, though.”
― Richard Laymon, The Midnight Tour

“Killing, resurrecting, living with a zombie. Even if she could accept all that,”
― Richard Laymon, Resurrection Dreams

“Gonna get me one of them Jeep Cherokees with the four-wheel drive, and go all over the whole country in it.”
― Richard Laymon, Body Rides

“And he pictured her down below, turning slowly in the currents, her skin pale blue in the cold rays of sunlight slanting down through the water, her hair flowing lazily around her face.”
― Richard Laymon, Darkness, Tell Us

“That sort of aloneness gives you goosebumps scurrying up your spine. It makes your scalp crawl.”
― Richard Laymon, Island

“The way she was hunched over, Jody could see down the front of her blouse. She had major cleavage. She had a ravine between her breasts. Her bra was black and lacy, which seemed like an odd, sexy sort of thing for a policewoman to be wearing on duty, even if she was working plainclothes. Jody wondered what her father might think of such large breasts and such a bra. Then she found herself blushing.”
― Richard Laymon, Endless Night

“Around the campfire sat the six, a bold and fearless crew … while out in the dark the fiend kept watch, though his balls were turning blue.” Laughing, he drank and handed the bourbon to Glen.”
― Richard Laymon, Darkness, Tell Us

“That sounds cool,” Chad said.”
― Richard Laymon, Darkness, Tell Us

“and”
― Richard Laymon, In the Dark

“Trapped inside the snotrag,” Keith said, “is a crumb of angel food trying to get out.” Lana”
― Richard Laymon, Darkness, Tell Us

“the remnants of her Georgia drawl always sounded a bit sad. She made him think of an aging Scarlett O’Hara torn from Tara’s halls but clinging to her pride and, with the help of a beauty parlor, her flaming hair.”
― Richard Laymon, Cuts

“Risk is the mustard on the hot dog of life.”
― Richard Laymon, Endless Night

“What . . . what did you do to Marv?’ ‘He’s all right.’ Her eyes lowered to Roy’s knife hand. He glanced down. His hand was shiny red. ‘So I lied,’ he said. ‘God in heaven! O merciful God!”
― Richard Laymon, The Complete Beast House Chronicles