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In honor of October, one of my favorite months and home of my favorite holiday, I thought I’d try to do some creepy posts this month. Because creepy things make me happy, and we all could use some happy.
Today’s post will feature one of my favorite horror writers: Clive Barker. I started loving Barker’s work in his Books of Blood story collections, and while I’ve seen Hellraiser and Nightbreed and CandyMan and Lord of Illusions, I’ve always preferred Barker’s written works to the filmic ones. Barker’s language is beautiful, baroque and ornamental,even--and perhaps especially--when it’s detailing horrific things. Beauty and violence and sex and death are entwined in a dark, glittering tapestry where the points of light are sharp enough to cut, bright enough to blind.
If forced to pick favorites, I’m a bit hard pressed. Among the stories, “Dread,” “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament,” “The Life of Death,” “The Forbidden,” “The Madonna,” and “In the Hills, the Cities.” And I confess I have a soft spot for the darkly comic, “The Yattering and Jack.” It’s harder for me to pin down the longer works I enjoy, but probably Cabal and the Abarat trilogy are special favorites.
So I’ve pulled together a few quotes from Barker talking about horror and from some of the works I mentioned above.
Enjoy!
“Evil is never abstract. It is always concrete, always particular and always vested in individuals. To deny monsters as individuals the right to speak, to actually state their case, is perverse - because I want to hear the Devil speak. I like the idea that a point of view can be made by the dark side.”
― Clive Barker
“He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart
“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.”
― Clive Barker, The Books of Blood
“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”
― Clive Barker
“You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.”
― Clive Barker
“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War
“Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat
“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood
“There is no delight the equal of dread”
― Clive Barker, The Books of Blood
“The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show
“Good horror fiction deals with taboos. It must always go to the limits of what is acceptable.”
― Clive Barker
“Three is the number of those who do holy work;
Two is the number of those who do lovers work;
One is the number of those who do perfect evil
Or perfect good.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat
“Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn't care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he'd had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes; sometimes women; even children. Ol' Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal
Today’s post will feature one of my favorite horror writers: Clive Barker. I started loving Barker’s work in his Books of Blood story collections, and while I’ve seen Hellraiser and Nightbreed and CandyMan and Lord of Illusions, I’ve always preferred Barker’s written works to the filmic ones. Barker’s language is beautiful, baroque and ornamental,even--and perhaps especially--when it’s detailing horrific things. Beauty and violence and sex and death are entwined in a dark, glittering tapestry where the points of light are sharp enough to cut, bright enough to blind.
If forced to pick favorites, I’m a bit hard pressed. Among the stories, “Dread,” “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament,” “The Life of Death,” “The Forbidden,” “The Madonna,” and “In the Hills, the Cities.” And I confess I have a soft spot for the darkly comic, “The Yattering and Jack.” It’s harder for me to pin down the longer works I enjoy, but probably Cabal and the Abarat trilogy are special favorites.
So I’ve pulled together a few quotes from Barker talking about horror and from some of the works I mentioned above.
Enjoy!
“Evil is never abstract. It is always concrete, always particular and always vested in individuals. To deny monsters as individuals the right to speak, to actually state their case, is perverse - because I want to hear the Devil speak. I like the idea that a point of view can be made by the dark side.”
― Clive Barker
“He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way.”
― Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart
“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.”
― Clive Barker, The Books of Blood
“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”
― Clive Barker
“You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.”
― Clive Barker
“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War
“Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat
“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood
“There is no delight the equal of dread”
― Clive Barker, The Books of Blood
“The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.”
― Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show
“Good horror fiction deals with taboos. It must always go to the limits of what is acceptable.”
― Clive Barker
“Three is the number of those who do holy work;
Two is the number of those who do lovers work;
One is the number of those who do perfect evil
Or perfect good.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat
“Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn't care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he'd had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes; sometimes women; even children. Ol' Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.”
― Clive Barker, Cabal