15 Random Horror Quotes

Throughout the years a lot of people asked me why I like horror so much. And sometimes I wonder this myself. Certainly it has something to do with a perverse nature or a tendency towards the sadistic or masochistic (depending whether you like to scare or to be scared). For myself I cannot say, but below you will find some thoughts and quotes from other horror writers.

I hope you'll find them stimulating and helpful in forming your own thoughts on this particularly nasty nook of literature.

1) 'When there is no imagination, there is no horror' - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

2) 'The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.' - H. P. Lovecraft.

3) 'Horror is the removal of masks' - Robert Bloch.

4) 'Horror is not a genre, it is an emotion' - Douglas E. Winter.

5) 'Civilization is hideously fragile [and] there's not much between us and the horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.' - C.P. Snow.

6) 'Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.' - Carlos Fuentes.

7) 'One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses.' - Robin Wood.

8) 'That truth is that monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.' - Stephen King.

9) 'The world is a wonderful place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.' - Robert Bloch.

10) '...A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.' - Joseph Conrad.

11) 'You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' - Eleanor Roosevelt.

12) 'Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.' - Robert Anton Wilson.

13) 'The charm of horror only tempts the strong' - Jean Lorrain.

 

14) 'There's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.' - Lon Chaney.

15) 'Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.' - Robert Bloch.

Sources:

Goodreads
The Cabinet

The Making of 'Beneath Dark Waters'

'Beneath Dark Waters', my very own collection of horror stories, is soon to be published in a revamped state and I thought I'd take the occasion to tell something about its inception.

Title - Although the title 'Beneath Dark Waters' could rever to many things that have to do with horror, like slimy creatures from some Lovecraft-ian universe lurking under the surface, that's just all very opportune. What it actually revers to is a Dutch proverb which translates as something like 'Calm Waters Run Deep'. It means to say that things which seem calm on the surface might actually have hidden meanings and depths.

I took the title Beneath Calm Waters for a short story collection I once wrote on the Dutch country side. This collection was, unfortunately, a still-born. It was general fiction and the stories were actually very terse, trying for the reader and in places just plain boring. It got rejected by many publishers and was a source of frustration for me for a long time.

When I started writing the horror collection, many of the old characters floated back to the surface, of you will, and are now featured in the ten stories of this collection. Since it was a horror collection, I only found it fitting to change the Calm to Dark. Especially since it incorporates so nicely said Lovecraft-ian monsters.

Setting - All of the ten stories are set in the countryside of North-Western Holland. This is one of the areas of Holland which were reclaimed from the sea in the 16th and 17th century. Before that it was just a conglomeration of islands connected by dikes and marshes and swamps which were practically constantly flooded. It's reclamation from the sea heralded a great time of prosperity for the local people which had now very new and fertile land to farm. It is also the countryside I grew up in. All my young life I lamented the lack of proper ghost and horror culture in my area. Now I've made my own.

It's a vast and ghostly countryside, both beautiful in summer and horribly trying in winter. Because if it's infamous flatness the wind pretty much whips everything that sticks out above the ground, sometimes accompanied with driving rains, hail, sleet and snow. It's certainly an acquired taste. Many of the city folk that come to settle down, leave again within 5 years.

Characters - Beneath Dark Waters is a very character-driven collection, which is to say that it offers the reader an insight in the psyche of the local people. I've tried my best to recreate some of the most telling characters of this area of Holland. Since nature is very cruel, water is an ever-present threat, the people are very stern and serious, preoccupied with work and family and the day-to-day activities. This brings with it a very down-to-earth and pragmatic view of life and the world in general.

Some characters I tried to downplay, like the farmer Moses in 'On a night filled with evil' and the priest in 'Rumours', while others are larger-than-life and overdone, like the farmer in 'Lost to the Raging Storm' and Sebastian in 'What Hides in the High Grass'. Others are just right on the money, like Max in 'New Life'.

Style - I tried to downplay the sensational in Beneath Dark Waters. Although I loved to bring up a horde of flying vampires in 'Rumours', I tried not to go overboard with it. I felt I needed to do justice to the place and the people that inspired me to write the collection and not slaughter them left, right and center. Many of the stories could be termed as sombre and dark, but certainly not without a sense of humour. Since I will always have a love-hate relationship with the countryside I grew up in, I guess 'sarcastic' is the best description. 

I just hope the overall effect will be that of a disturbing black-and-white photograph.

I hope this gives a small idea of what I tried to achieve with the collection (and wetted your appetite for it).

Keep an eye out for more updates as it comes out!

Marcel

Review: Little Hands Clapping!

Little Hands Clapping - Dan Rhodes - Another Fnac-book I picked up on my trip to Portugal and again picked solely on the strength of the title and the cover. For all those self-publishing authors out there, never underestimate the power of the title and the cover! It's the calling card for your book, both online and offline.

What is it about?

Little Hands Clapping is as weird and funny as the title makes you suspect. We meet the Old Man who lives above a bizarre German museum, showing the various ways in which people commit suicide. He eats crackers in the morning and spiders in his sleep. He becomes strangely acquainted with the village doctor who has a terrible hobby all his own and needs the help of the Old Man in fulfilling this.
Parallel to this storyline is the story of two young lovers (from Portugal, oh the coincidence!) who loose each other when moving out into the real world. The young girl is sent into a whirlpool of depression and suicidal thoughts and finally ends up in the museum of the Old Man. The final outcome of both story lines is written with such wit I re-read it instantly.

So, is it any good?

Rhodes combines sad romance and melancholy with horror and comedy and does so with fervor. Never the writing wavers, it stands like a brick house, solid as a rock. Many of the jokes will send you hiccuping for the toilet and more than once I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. The larger-than-life characters all seem to have a wonderful air of innocence around them, even the Old Man, which somehow makes them real again, despite the obvious comical basis of the book. Although the story feels more like a short story than a novel, it still counts over 300 pages, so that says something for the pace of the story which is fast. Not a word too many.

Dan Rhodes Blog

Other Reviews - Floating Robes' Read and Reading!

Newsflash: Doing what you want? Not always easy...

'Do what you love, no matter what anybody says.' This is common knowledge and any friend will give this advice after a few beers. But it is quite another thing to put it into practice.

WHEN I was about 20 years old and had just enrolled in the writing college in Amsterdam, I felt myself so fortunate to be surrounded by my intellectual peers! I reveled in their attention and took everything they said at face value. They were published writers, career writers and script writers with, in Holland at least, some very impressive work on their CV. 

FOUR years later, right around the time of my graduation, I hated them.

I DIDN'T hate them personally of course, but I loathed everything they stood for. I hated their preconceived notions of literature, of what was 'good writing' and what was 'bad writing', their little get-togethers at Wednesdays in the 'right' cafes, their red wines and their drunken evenings with their jokes that were really not very funny.

WHAT got me most of all, was their complete lack of creativity and their endless devotion to writers who so obviously lacked any creativity themselves, but had good marketeers. Maybe it's my countryside upbringing, maybe I'm just ranting about something everybody already knows, but since then, I have viewed literature and art in general with a certain level of suspicion.

AFTER my graduation I tried to be a Serious Writer. I spent some years writing up stories about everyday country living, invariably featuring characters that toiled hard for little reward. The stories were done in very terse and strict prose. If they were in photographs, they would be in black-and-white. When it was finished, I sent it out to various publishers. Of course, it was rejected every time. Countryside prose is not very hot in Holland.

AFTER three years of working hard, I had nothing to show for it except a handful of rejections and a serious lack of sunlight. I was tired and, admittedly, somewhat bitter.

I TOOK a vacation to Scotland and found an reignited an old love I had: horror. As soon as I got home, I set myself down and took one of the characters of my book and killed him by a tree possessed with the ghost of an evil old man. I sent it off to a magazine and it got published right away. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the e-mail saying they would accept it. 

BUT, what was more important then my first publication, was that I had FUN writing it. For four years I had been drilled to read these literary stories that basically told the reader that the whole world was a bunch of crap, love did not exist and friendship is an illusion (this is actually the name of a famous Dutch song) and I was made to believe that truly creative genres like horror and fantasy were not the playground of Serious Writers. Writing a horror story felt somehow 'naughty'. I had a wonderful time writing it. And apparently people enjoyed reading it as well.

I DID away with my collection of Serious Stories and never looked back.

THE MORALE of this story is probably to do what you love, no matter what anybody says. And although everybody knows this in theory, it is quite another thing to put it into practice. Peer-pressure, the promise of golden mountains, fame, recognition or whatever it is you're after, these are all things that can make you loose sight of why you were writing in the first place. Beware of this!

Hope it helps!

10 tips for the Successful Integration of Zombies in Human Society!

Ehm, hello? ... Is this things on...? Yes? Okay, there we go?

My fellow zombies, in the past year we clawed our way out of our earthy graves. We've stumbled across this world, looking for food, and our numbers have grown exponentially. And we can be proud of that. 

They may say we're mindless and, honestly, sometimes I look at us, and I think they're right. Our torn clothes and vacant stares certainly seemed to suggest that. And sometimes we aren't always as eloquent as we'd like to be. So for a successful coexistence of humans and zombies, we need to clean up our act. This is tantamount to our integration in normal society, people. So here are some tips:

1) Wear clean clothes. Don't stumble around this world in the same clothes you died in or even the same ones you wore yesterday! The bloodstains are horrible to look at and brains are really hard to get out in the wash. Besides, they smell. A new set of clothes might also help you cover up that nasty gun-shot wound in your belly.


2) Wash yourselves. Even if it's a little dip in the brook or even standing out in the rain. A little water never killed anyone. And while you're at it, take pride in your appearance. Use a comb every now and again, wipe that blood from your chin, use some make-up to hide those skin ruptures and pick the pieces of brain from your teeth. Honestly, it's disgusting sometimes. 

3) Help a fellow zombie. A society is judged by the way they take care of those less fortunate. If his legs are cut off with a chainsaw or he has a big hole in his chest from a shotgun, don't leave him there in the streets. Help him back on his feet, if he still has them. If he doesn't, ask him where he wants to go and carry them there. But always remember, one day it could be you laying there.

4) When conversing with humans, speak their language. Or at least try to. I've always found that people are more willing to speak to you if you speak at least a couple of words in their language. You will not get what you want by hollering 'brains, brains, brains!' all the time.

5) Be gentle, sometimes. Our appearance is off-putting as it is, even without throwing rudeness in the mix. So when you see an old lady trying to cross the street, don't crack her head open like a ripe melon and eat her brains. Help her. And maybe next time, they won't come after you with a hunting rifle. A little friendliness goes a long way.

6) Don't loiter out in the streets. We're not vagabonds, for crying out loud! Especially after dark. Find a house to relax in. There's enough empty ones out there since we came out. So why not try it for a change? Sit in a chair, kick your feet up, try the TV-thing, they seem to like it.

7) Clean up your mess, people, I can't stress this enough. People don't like to see their next of kin laying dead in the streets for weeks on end, all chewed up and spat out. They might be just food to you, but humans have feelings too. So be a little considerate and get them out of sight. As a functioning part of society, it's our job as well to keep the streets clean.

8) Find the evil ones. This'll take some time, but I really want you to try and put the effort in. Humans come in all shapes and sizes and some of them are more evil than a pack of starving vampires! Find those, hunt them down and eat their brains. People will thank you for it afterwards. And their brains are more juicier too.

9) Don't smudge the windows. Clawing and scratching won't help you get into a house and it might give off the wrong signal. Instead, wait patiently. If they are ready to come out, they will. People put a lot of pride in their house and smudging the windows or banging the doors constantly, might get them upset.

10) Try to have a decent conversation with each other. Reach out and touch a fellow zombie. This is two-fold. First of all, people seemed to be put off by guttural sounds or vacant, silent stares. Second, you might learn something useful. Humans have survived for thousands of years and have found countless ways to communicate with each other. Why not start with a simple 'How do you do?'

For the rest, we all hope you have a prosperous 2011. I hope you will apply some of these tips, if not all of them, in your day to day exploits. From all of us here at Zombie HQ, we wish you a happy new year and remember to stay away from the guy with the sniper rifle!