American Gothic Quotes

“The property is cursed. Death dwells here. These rivers run with the blood of those who came before you. Life may not trespass, and when it tries, it will surely be snuffed out.”
― Denise Daisy

“The house is not essential for domestic abuse, but hell, it helps: a private space where private dramas are enacted behind, as the cliché goes, closed doors; but also windows sealed against the sound, drawn curtains, silent phones. A house is never apolitical. It is conceived, constructed, occupied, and policed by people with power, needs, and fears. Windex is political. So is the incense you burn to hide the smell of sex, or a fight.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Them, graves, the city in late-August haze: a twenty-first-century American Gothic.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“I found it necessary to change my posture, in order to preserve my blood from congealing.”
― Charles Brockden Brown

“Herman Marshall breathed the Smith & Wesson, and its odor was like wisps of powdered coal. Loop 610 was behind a distant row of tract houses, and he listened to the traffic. It was an unrelenting hiss the way Niagara Falls no doubt was an unrelenting hiss. It was a perfect and endless sound of fear and danger that had been created by the human race because everyone said Progress, and hip, hip, hooray, kiss my ass, let’s all bow down in the face of good old Progress. Herman Marshall grunted. He wondered whether the police cars would use their sirens.”
― Don Robertson, The Ideal, Genuine Man