35 Quotes by Whitley Strieber

I've always been interested in definitions, because in the Bible, the Ten Commandments are there but there's no real clear definition of what sin is, in a fundamental sense - how we can use the words to evaluate our lives as we go along: Am I doing something that is ethically good? Am I being worthwhile in my life at this moment?

To make a long story short: the way I work out my fears is in the fiction. The results of that work go into the books of fact.

Everytime someone ends a prayer in the Western world they say Amen - that is the name of an Egyptian god associated with completion. So we're still praying to their gods.

You're typecast as a mid-list author even before you start. It used to be that a writer would get five or six books before you were pulled and given up on. They gave you a chance to build an audience. Now, if the first book doesn't build an audience, you're gone.

The visitors tell me that there is an organic quality in our skulls that dampens telepathy, and that this is going to fade.

No doubt, I wont be believed, and thats all right, because, in a sense, it leaves me free in ways that belief would not.

The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair, basically a chore. Buy mother a book, dad a new tie, my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

I wondered if I might not be in the grip of demons, if they were not making me suffer for their own purposes, or simply for their enjoyment.

Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected... so far the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and doctors who were working with me...Alone at night I worried about the legendary cunning of demons ...At the very least I was going stark, raving mad.