Weird Fiction Quotes

“Have you seen The Yellow Sign?”
― Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“Every time you think you have the world figured, trust me, that’s just when the world’s got you figured and is about to spring and break your back”
― Brian Evenson, A Collapse of Horses

“A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!”
― A. Merritt, The Moon Pool

“The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another.

'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable.

Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow.
And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness.

The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.”
― China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

“The Demons are afraid of what we are hunting”
― China Mieville, Perdido Street Station

“People are slippery.
Especially when they excrete.
Or bleed.
Or fuck.”
― Logan Ryan Smith, Y is for Fidelity

“True writers have multiple personalities. Every one of them is insane.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth . . . the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily . . . this loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

“I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commoriom, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean rulers. I shall write it with the violet juice of the suvana-palm, which turns to a blood-red rubric with the passage of years, on a strong vellum that is made from the skin of the mastodon, as a warning to all good thieves and adventurers who may hear some lying legend of the lost treasures of Commoriom and be tempted thereby.”
― Clark Ashton Smith, The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

“I didn’t want to read it, but it was my strict policy never to disagree with people. Bitter experience had taught me that the minute you contradict someone, you instantly get sucked into their asinine private world. By avoiding arguments I wound up not talking to anyone. I lived utterly alone in my own asinine private world. Terribly alone and constantly crowded by idiots—that was my life. Rats gnaw off their feet with less provocation.”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

“Honey,” said a woman’s voice. “Honey, wake up.”

It was his mother’s voice. For a moment he thought he was back in his bed at home, asleep, and she was waking him up for school. That was how she always used to wake him up. A gentle touch at first and then gently shaking him awake. But why wasn’t she calling him by his name? And what was his name again?

“Honey,” she said again, more insistently, and he opened his eyes.

Only he was not at home. He was in the hospital room, and it was not his mother. It wasn’t even a woman. In fact, there was no one there at all.”
― Brian Evenson, A Collapse of Horses

“One day John J. Eastwood said, “There is a bad guy in town.” He said, “I want to fight him.” “First”, he said,
“I’m going to have some whiskey.” Then he went outside and started a fight. But he got shot. But he didn’t really get shot. But he killed a hot dog! The next day he was dead. We had his funeral.....
Kids, this is about westerns”
― chris mackey, Radio Mustard: Book One: The Weight

“Fransk balkong, tror jeg de kaller sånne små selvmordsutvekster, akkurat store nok til å hoppe fra og ikke stort mer.”
― Tone Wasbak Melbye, Wales and the art of fine dying

“Who made their deaths impossible? Who reversed every lethal decision? Who vetoed their suicides?”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

“This place has a mind of its own. This place, this trap, this bedlam, this bardo state, this gnarled knot of nothing.”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

“What if it's all right that I'm mad? What if that's not my problem? What if my problem is that I don't let myself be mad? That I'm forever and always tearing chunks out of myself, trying to root out the madness.”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

“Cheated of shivering and cramps. Cheated of pleas and tears. Nothing outside of me, just my brain winding up my spinal cord like a rubber band in a toy airplane. Struggling to squirm out of the rotten frozen core of that dark, that dark, that dark so cold, you could cut it with a knife, with a knife so sharp, it would cut off your thumb, and your thumb so numb, it wouldn't cut butter, and the butter so small that it sings in the eye of an icicle and slips through a needle, through a needle so thin, it would slide off your spoon, and the spoon so hot, it burns a hole in your tongue, and your tongue so wet that it sticks to a frosty parking meter, and there you are, there you are, there you are, stuck. On a city street in the dirty sleet, stuck by your tongue.”
― Stepan Chapman, The Troika

“Holmes would have found it useless to explain to [Watson] that cats partake of the most ancient mysteries of the dark, and so have a proper place in any night of intrigue and adventure. (pg 270)”
― Darrell Schweitzer

“Behind her, the merchant presses the eletric hammer against her lower spine, and pulls the trigger again. Wasp dreams of slamming through the ground, her bones melding with saurian predators trapped miles below the surface of dead dried seas”
― Livia Llewellyn, Furnace

“And so I scrabble greedily about in a cold barren room in a castle that has no name, for a few exquisite sparks of a long-lost summer. Endless winter in these mountains, endless desiccated life, two lovers, and no love at all.
Will this be your existence?Will this be you?
What is it that I say and do here in the cold,
on the snow of a country that it not my home?”
― Livia Llewellyn, Furnace

“Life: never extinguished, simply traveling, from one perfect creation to the next. Pale flakes drift up around the undead and the dying, all of them heedless to the rising drifts, the pressing cold. Stars wheel and gyre mindlessly in the heavens above us. Branches dislodge their heavy wintery burden, anointing the heads of wolves with silver crowns. And all the terrors of the night have vanished, valiant Mina, deep into the obsidian oblivion of a sudden sleep. Is this not the most beautiful of all countries? Is this not the most wondrous of all nights?”
― Livia Llewellyn, Furnace

“In her tiny dorm room bathroom, under the bright buzz of fluorescent tubes, Knox and Severin silently draw. When they finish, they stare into the mirror, at themselves, at each other. Severin flicks off the light switch. The tiny room plunges into darkness, but their reflections remain bright in the silver glass, skin like pale moths, hair like flame, eyes like fireflies. Slender green threads of electricity travel up and down the spikes of their mohawked heads. Knox turns to her: their tongues touch tip to tip, briefly, and small sparks arc out from their blackened fingernails, leaving feathery singe marks on the yellowing countertop”
― Livia Llewellyn, Furnace

“In hindsight, we should have been more vigilant, more aware that these were the places of a town where spticemia and putrification creep in first, those lonely and familiar sections we slipped into and through every day without concern or care-not the seedy crumbling but flashy edges where decay was expected, and, from a certain element of our small society, even accepted and encouraged. These quiet streets of lonely backwater districts, these were the places we never gave a single thought about, because we thought they would be here forever, unchanging in the antiseptic amber of our fixed memories. These quiet streets of lonely backwater districts were always the first to go.”
― Livia Llewellyn, Furnace

“Talking about one’s stories is a little too much like nailing a dog to the floor—you can get it to stay put that way but it doesn’t do much for the dog.”
― Brian Evenson

“They’re pregnant all the time, but they never give birth, on account of how they’re pregnant with tomorrow and a year from now and alternate universes where everyone is half-bat.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 100, January 2015

“The line between ghost and glitch grows thinner every day. One is a whisper from the past, the other a whisper from the machine—both leave traces, and neither likes to be ignored.”
― Tony Brooks

“The part of us that's me argues about that; who defines love, what is love, isn't it all just chemical crap, invented by us, bought and sold by humans?
The part of us that's Axa tells me to shut up and LOVE, dammit.”
― Drew Huff, My Name Isn't Paul

“I knew from the lingering shadows in his eyes that he had been to that site where diseased shadow crept into his pulsing heart and altered his sanity.”
― W.H. Pugmire, Gathered Dust and Others