457 Quotes by Clive Barker

She was so beautiful, you see. Not in any two-dimensional sense: she wasn’t young, she wasn’t innocent, she didn’t have that pristine symmetry so favored by ad-men and photographers. Her face was plainly that of a woman in her early forties: it had been used to laugh and cry, and usage leaves its marks. But she had a power to transform herself, in the subtlest way, making that face as various as the sky.

Among his memories of the whole and the human, sharpest was that of Decker.

They knew a lot, the dead. How many times had she said to Harry they were the world’s greatest untapped resource? It was true. All they’d seen, all they’d suffered, all they’d triumphed over – lost to a world in need of wisdom. And why? Because at a certain point in the evolution of the species a profound superstition was sewn into the human heart that the dead were to be considered sources of terror rather than enlightenment.

It was that sleep itself – the act of closing the eyes and relinquishing control of her consciousness – was something she was temperamentally unsuited to.

Be strong, little mother,” she said to Melissa. “I know you can be.” “Yes?” Melissa said a little doubtfully.

What I do know is that I have never found clowns remotely funny. I am not alone in this, I think. More people find clowns disturbing or distressing rather than raucously amusing. Is it that the nature of human existence has changed so radically in the last century or so that what was funny to our grandparents and great-grandparents is now tragic or terrifying?

As for theatre, there’s ups and downs to everything. Theatre is ephemeral. But that is part of its charm because you can always say the production was better than it was.

What did I see? It’s no use telling you there are no words. Of course there are words; there are always words. The question is: can I wield them well enough to evoke the power of what I witnessed? That I doubt. But let me do my best.

My skull was a face that concealed scorpions.