1991 Quotes

... the logic of supernatural horror [is] a logic founded on fear, a logic whose sole principle states: Existence equals nightmare. Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure..

~ Thomas Ligotti

So it is that supernatural horror is the product of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not the pastime of even our closest relations in the wholly natural world: we gained it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are. Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, we immediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this gift.

~ Thomas Ligotti

I don't like the way our community throws the word around like it's water, because it's a derogatory term. A lot of times people come up to me and say, What's up my nigger? I'll respond, Nah, wait a minute. What? Oh, oh, what's up my brother? Sometimes you have to check people, because if it gets loose with us then white people will start to use it. I know a bunch of white people that started to get lax so I had to check them. Some black people were afraid to check them because they thought it was cool. You can never turn that word around and make it cool Nigger is just derogatory, it's wrong, and it's a fucked up term. It's not a word of love, Yo, what's up my nigger? Fuck that. You can't turn the word puss around. Go around and say, What's up pussy to a brother. He'll try to kill you. What's up dickhead? You can't turn that around, so you can't turn nigger around as hard as you try.

~ Chuck D

While horror may make us squirm or quake, it will not make us cry at the pity of things. The vampire may symbolize our horror of both life and death, but none of us has ever been uprooted by a symbol. The zombie may conceptualize our sickness of the flesh and its appetites, but no one has ever been sickened to death by a concept.

~ Thomas Ligotti

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple—children are made to feel that they must give themselves up if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse—loss of one's own

~ Christopher S. Hyatt

But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude—either through insight or sheer exhaustion—that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are.

~ Thomas Ligotti

The pages of history are red with the blood of illuminated saints who were murdered by their religions for actually achieving the advertised spiritual rewards.

~ Christopher S. Hyatt

All that was left to us was to wonder: who knows all that is innate to this world, or to any other? Why should there not be something buried deep within appearances, something that wears a mask to hide itself behind the visibility of nature?

~ Thomas Ligotti

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

~ Christopher Hitchens