“There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration.”

I want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me.

Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves – although perhaps it does not come out in the same way – and then they must try to conquer that fault.

Though sympathy alone can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.

I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.

No man knows where the Castle of King Death is. All men and women, boys and girls, and even little wee children should so live that when they have to enter the Castle and see the grim King, they may not fear to behold his face.

I stood beside Van Helsing, and said;- “Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!” He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:- “Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!

I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same.

I’m a hard nut to crack, and I take it standing up.

Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.

I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us.

It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.

These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.

Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it stands.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.

If we want a better original idea, we must generate our own before we screen others’ suggestions.

The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

The one word you should forget when you start a new project is the word ‘I’ – you need to replace that word ‘I’ with the idea of ‘everybody else.

Making an idea into an emotion.

Both men have an authoritarian idea of government; democracy is merely a façade.

Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share.

I did an album and they allowed me to sell it at the show. I also did a Disney cruise line gig.

The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying ’24-hour news’ almost has satire laced in it.