"The surreal is as integral a part of our lives as the 'real,' although one might argue that, since the unconscious underlies consciousness, and we are continuously bombarded by images, moods, and memories from that uncharitable terrain, it is in fact more primary than the 'real.'"

"The standards for horror fiction should be no less than those for 'serious literary' fiction in which originality of concept, depth of characters, and attentiveness to language are vitally important."
-Joyce Carol Oates

"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have.  Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task.  The rest is the madness of art."
-Henry James

"One way to avoid what has already been done is to be true to yourself."

"Tradition is a pretty poor excuse for perpetrating stereotypes."
-Ramsey Campbell

"When asked why I write psychological horror, I always reply that this form is the most intimate way to reach a reader.  Think about it."
-Wayne Allen Sallee

"Horror is about how people react when they encounter the plot."
-Tina Jens

"Good fiction, by definition, is credible.  It is a lie that can be believed."
-Mort Castle

"A story isn't like a smoothly running engine, but is rather like a photograph.  Photos can never be a perfect representation of what an eye looking at the same subject will see, partially due to the limitations of lenses and emulsions, but largely due to the conscious choice of the photographer."
-Nick Mamatas

"The role of the artist is to not look away."
-Akira Kurosawa

"Horror is not a genre.  It is an emotion."
-Douglas E. Winter

"To shrink from pain in any form of art is to shrink from something fundamental about life--from part of the human, animal condition."
-Jack Ketchum

"If your sole ambition is commercial success, look elsewhere for guidance; you probably lack the courage to write great horror ficiton."
-Douglas E. Winter

"You can forgive virtually anything--any perversion, any nastiness--if it's really done with style."
-James Herbert

"The best horror fiction is intrinsically subversive, striking against the pasteboard masks of fantasy to seek the true face of reality."
-Douglas E. Winter

"My feeling about contemporary horror writing is that is suffers from the same malaise that is suffocating most art forms in our time: widespread and deep-seated illiteracy on the part of the body politic and a lack of historical memory."
-Harlan Ellison

"We are curious about anything unusual--including agony, including bloody murder."
Jack Ketchum (Dallas Mayr)

"It is lurid and melodramatic, but it is true."
D. H. Lawrence of Edgar Allan Poe's horror fiction

"My feeling about contemporary horror writing is that it suffers from the same malaise that is suffocating most art forms in our time: widespread and deep-seated illiteracy on the part of the body politic and a lack of historical memory."
Harlan Ellison

"The Devil is by no means the worst that there is; I would rather have dealings with him than many a human being.  He honors his agreements much more promptly than many a swindler on Earth.  To be true, when payment is due he comes on the dot; just as twelve strikes, fetches his soul and goes off home to Hell like a good Devil.  He's just a businessman as is right and proper."
J. N. Nestroy, Hollenangst

"And as things fell apart
Nobody paid any attention"
Talking Heads

Short Story:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Ernest Hemingway (his best work, he claimed)

"...take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; dogs barking at the you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels.  You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way..."
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Albert Einstein

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam that flashes across his mind from within...  In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Don't you understand? Nothing outside that doesn't begin inside. Nothing real that isn't dreamed first..."
Fletcher, from The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
H. P. Lovecraft

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
-Noam Chomsky

"'In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.'
'Don't you mean supervillian?'
'Nah.  Hero, for sure.  Think about it.  In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac.  At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality.  Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me.'"
-From "Horns" by Joe Hill

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
-Tyler Durden