In the distance, steel-blue mountains loomed heavy on the horizon, their shoulders burdened with the same accursed snow the gods were currently depositing upon the lowlands. Between us and the mountains, the vast expanse of...

I came from across the ocean and through the wilderness and landed here and found you hiding behind a tapestry. My fate was sealed at the sight of your stockinged feet.~Viktor von Strassenberg

Some believe that every library looks like a splendid cemetery of human thoughts and ideas. Could librarians be called grave-diggers? However that may be, like a cemetery, a library will never stop being of use.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah… Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting...

Time is tick, tick, ticking away. How many souls will I capture today? Will they be a challenge or will they be given? Only time will tell as the clock keeps tick, tick, ticking. Your...

grow a girl up quick”; it was only last november that she turned seventeen.

History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.

Strength and victory… What he would never praise himself for, but whose loss was his most obsessive fear.

Most gothics are overplotted novels whose success or failure hinges on the author’s ability to make you believe in the characters and partake of the mood.

I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to...

Can you look at this brilliant wound?

I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.

My ghost is the only soul who ever comes to cry on my grave… Only the skies cried sincerely on my funeral.

In those few words you’ve summed up my life – my reason for existence. It’s you. Any pain I’ve suffered, the mistakes I’ve made, the path laid out for me have all led here –...

The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over.For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped...

Viktor, what?

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

Gray.The overcast skies had the colour of deadened stones, and seemed closer than usually, as though they were phlegmatically observing my every movement with their apathetic emptily blue-less eyes; each tiny drop of hazy rain...

He who writes is the martyr, seen through the eyes of the unsuspecting doll.

Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed there must be evil.

—if the spirit tries to hide, its temple far away… acopper for those they ask, a diamond for those who stay.

Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings –

I spend my nights thinking the worstAnd telling myself that everything’s going to work outI keep kicking myself in the mouthOpening up every cut that should be a scar by now

Shirley Jackson’s writings are a must for aficionados of the gothic and of good literature.

But to die as lovers may – to die together, so that they may live together.

They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.

So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –

I’m yours, for eternity!

It seemed for a moment as if something was there, loitering between the knurled and towering cherry trees, a flash of a presence as stark as the sight of the snow against their bare branches...

Now would you get me a soda?

There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied int he one, I will indulge...

I lie more convincingly than I tell the truth.

River had never lost his cool, not since I’d know him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer’s day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when...

A whole Gothic world had come to grief…there was now no armour glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled…

I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy...

I was never able to accept anyone else’s support but my own –

People do not ever change. The person you see later is merely the one that was hidden from you in the beginning. Shane KP O’Neill – The Gates Of Babylon.

If on thoughts of death we are fed,Thus, a coffin, became my bed.

Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see – each with their peculiar propensities,...

You don’t need a sad soul to feel the beauty of a dead graveJust stay with the pale moonwhen darkness wants the night to be brave

The unknown grayish mystifying forest was benumbed into frost-covered cold, and the tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods...

Eternity,” I repeated, the words burning into my brain, so much so it felt we’d made some form of sacred and unbreakable bond.

I found serenity in the towers, especially the highest, even in the midst of winter. The crows also enjoyed the lofts, and I habitually fed them.Often I held conference with the grotesques lining the summit....

Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.

If I were dead, I wouldn’t be sad, and I wouldn’t be glad, because I wouldn’t be.

I was beginning to agree with the thesis that some truths were better off dead.And buried.

The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps,...

I have learned one lesson in all this and I will share it knowing it will do no one any good. The lesson is this: “There are none more complicit in one’s undoing than one’s...

I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help...

Paranoia. The more you think of an imaginary problem, the more you feel as though it’s real –