Sirensongs

“A life was a secret thing, even between a husband and wife. Your secret life was completely your own, and because it was unknown, would never be mourned. The secret life of each individual went unhonored through eternity.”
― Steve Rasnic Tem, Deadfall Hotel

“All I can offer is this (without a single remembrance or image, or even incoherent wisp of correspondence), even so I knew, in those eradicated moments, and I know still: That there, there outside the gates of any physical state or world we may inhabit, something is—which, being so unlike, so beautiful and radiant and eternal—can never be transported into living life, not even by a word. Brighter than fires, more soft than fur, better than the best—nameless, non-communicable, absolute. And, without a bookmark in our hearts or brains to enable us to find it while here, yet there—there it nevertheless is, and will be ever. There is nothing to fear or to regret. There is no end. Only always a Beginning—that not even the most lucid scripture, or most transcendent art (even that of the Scarlet Lily, Cremisia Ranaldi) can recreate. We touch upon it, yes, I believe we do, in our greatest poets (which is why, if only as a ghost, she could undo the door). In the best of love or joy, that too—but all of this is a shadow. The shadow of the Nothing which is Everything.”
― Tanith Lee, Redder Than Blood

“We are each either among the demoralized showing the way to a future of eternal nightmare, or we are losers celebrating our moment in hell.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Spectral Link

“Some people, I believe, are paid for dreaming. But most, I think, are punished.”
― Steve Rasnic Tem, Onion Songs