Ligotti Quotes

“We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“For us, then, life is a confidence trick we must run on ourselves, hoping we do not catch on to any monkey business that would leave us stripped of our defense mechanisms and standing stark naked before the silent, staring void. To end this self-deception, to free our species of the paradoxical imperative to be and not to be conscious, our backs breaking by degrees upon a wheel of lies, we must cease reproducing. Nothing less will do.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

“H.P. Lovecraft is a self-admitted early influence on Ligotti’s work. However, in a kind of metaphysical horror story of its own, Ligotti early on subsumed Lovecraft and left his dry husk behind, having taken what sustenance he needed for his own devices. (Most other writers are, by contrast, consumed by Lovecraft when they attempt to devour him.)”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

“All supernatural horror depends on a confusion of what we believe should be and should not be. As scientists, philosophers, and spiritual figures have attested, our heads are full of illusions; things, including human things, are frequently not what they seem…No one can prove that our existence is a paradox and a horror. Everything is alright with the world.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“For various reasons—a lack of success in life, insufficient education, too much introspection, too little love from mother and father, that damned Ligotti book, and a hundred other things—I began to sink deeper and deeper into despondency and pessimism. Reality itself seemed to take on a darker hue, as everywhere I looked, I saw only futility, idiocy, and the utter pointlessness of modern life, especially mine.”
― Keijo Kangur, Broken: Twenty Pieces