Nick Coffin

“The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I emphasise it now; I had little-to-nothing in common with other people. Their values I did not comprehend, their ideals were to me a living horror. Call it ostentatious but I even sought to provide tangible proof of my withdrawal from the world. I posted a sign in the entrance to the building wherein I dwelt; a sign that indicated I had no wish to be disturbed by anyone, for any purpose whatsoever.

As these convictions took hold of me and, as I denied, nay even repudiated, the hold that the current society of men possesses over its ranks, as I retreated into a hermitage of the imagination, disentangling my own concerns from those paramount to the age in which I happened to be born, an age with no claim to be more enlightened, significant or progressive than any other, I tried to make a stand for the spirit. Tyranny, in this land, I was told, was dead. But I contend that the replacement of one form of tyranny with another is still tyranny. The secret police now operate not via the use of brute force in dark underground cells; they operate instead by a process of open brainwashing that is impossible to avoid altogether. The torture cells are not secret; they are everywhere, and so ubiquitous that they are no longer seen for what they are.

One may abandon television; one may abandon all forms of broadcast media, even the Internet, but the advertising hoardings in every street, on vehicles, inside transport centres, are still there. And they contain the same messages.

Only the very rich can avoid their clutches utterly. Those who have obtained sufficient wealth may choose their own surroundings, free from the propaganda of a decayed futurity. And yet, and yet, in order to obtain such a position of freedom it is first necessary to have served the ideals of the tyranny slavishly, thereby validating it.

("The Tower")”
― Mark Samuels, Best New Horror 23

“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
― Louis C.K.

“Hating clowns is a waste of time because you’ll never loathe a clown as much as he loathes himself, but a magician? Magicians think they’re wise and witty, full of patter and panache, walking around like they didn’t deserve to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in a lake. For all the grandeur of its self-regard, magic consists of nothing more than making a total stranger feel stupid. Worse, the magician usually dresses like a jackass.”
― Grady Hendrix, Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction