457 Quotes by Clive Barker

We’re living; but we impersonate the dead better than the dead themselves.

The extraordinary’s the norm.

This was the substance of every moment, she realized: the body – never certain if the next lungful would be its last – hovering for a tiny time between cessation and continuance. And in that space out of time, between a breath expelled and another drawn, the miraculous was easy, because neither flesh nor reason has laid their edicts there.

When, finally, she did sleep, it was the slumber of a watcher and waiter. Light, and full of sighs.

Men’s supply of passion, she knew from long experience, was easily depleted. Though they might threaten to move earth and heaven too, half an hour later their boasts would be damp sheets and resentment.

You’re right, of course. I haven’t come this far to deliver us into oblivion. I have such sights to show you. Soon, you will have answers to questions you have never even dared to ask.

They’re not in the gutter because they had visions, Gentle,” Clem said. “They’re there because they’ve been abused, or they’ve abused themselves.” “Which means they can’t cover their despair the way the rest can. They’ve got no distractions from their pain. So they get drunk and crazy, and the next day they’re even more lost than they were the day before. But I’d still rather trust them than all the bishops and the ministers. Maybe they’re naked, but isn’t that a holy state?

Do you understand?” the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy – the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. “Do you even know who we are?” it asked.

I’ve held a brain in my hands, which is an extraordinary experience.