Quotes by Thomas Ligotti

“No one at the factory can remember how long weve worked here, or how old we are, yet our pace and productivity continues to increase. It seems as if neither the company nor our temporary supervisor...”

“... the logic of supernatural horror [is] a logic founded on fear, a logic whose sole principle states: "Existence equals nightmare." Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, ...”

“There was simply no peace to be had no matter where you hid yourself away. Even in a northern border town of such intensely chaotic oddity and corruption there was still some greater chaos, some de...”

“... nature did not make us to feel too good for too long (which would be no good for the survival of the species) but only to feel good enough to imagine, erroneously, that someday we might feel go...”

“Even if this is only nonsense and dreams, I feel the need to perpetuate it all. Especially at this moment, when this pain is taking over my mind and my self. Pretty soon none of this will make any ...”

“And one thing we know is real: horror. It is so real, in fact, that we cannot be sure it could not exist without us. Yes, it needs our imaginations and our consciousness, but it does not ask or req...”

“So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with his corruption, a low-budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask...”

“The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.”

“Something statuesque is approaching her. It radiates a field of dynamic tension that grows more intense the closer it comes, its shadow lengthening upon the floor. Still, she cannot turn around to ...”

“Indeed, Dr Haxhausen fought to preserve his freedom with very good reason, for he required a great deal of itfreedom, not reasonto pursue his plans for the future.”

“Perhaps our judgement of the purple woman was unfair. No doubt her theories concerning the "approach of the Teatro" made us all uneasy. But was this reason enough to cast her out from that artistic...”

“The experimental writer, then, is simply following the storys commands to the best of his human ability. The writer is not the story, the story is the story. See? Sometimes this is very hard to acc...”

“We are aberrationsbeings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing...”

“We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life onl...”

“If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do things that were not pleasurable, such as toiling for our subsistence. And then we would not survive....”

“Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. Its like network television. Im your local cable access station.”

“A misbegotten hatchling of consciousness, a birth defect of our species, imagination is often revered as a sign of vigor in our make-up. But it is really just a psychic overcompensation for our imp...”

“In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is not...”

“The worst fear of the race yes, the world suddenly transformed into a senseless nightmare, horrible dissolution of things. Nothing compares, even oblivion is a sweet dream. You understand why, of c...”

“This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really out there cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous...”