“In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.”

There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

In general, every country has the language it deserves.

I think most people are more important than their opinions.

The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.

We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is !

The future is as irrevocable as an inflexible yesterday.

I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer – even as Wells thought about him – or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose.

In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.

The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

Man’s memory shapes Its own Eden within.

You can’t measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.

I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.

Usually horror in your personal life can translate into some good music. Sometimes. Sometimes it can be really maudlin and boring, and kind of personal.

I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror.

In Kerry, you’re said to be flamin’; in Waterford, you’re in the horrors; and in Cavan, you’ve gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you’re steamin’, while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.

I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I’ll just keep writing them until they do sell–and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

I grew up on genre – on Westerns, spy thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy novels, horror novels. Especially horror novels.

As far as I’m concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that’s the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.

Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.

There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though – ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature – and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away.