Beijing Paradise BBS Backup/PARADISE.ISO/software/BBSDOORW/XBBS_118.ZIP/XBBS.ZIP/QUOTES.XBS

Text File | 1992-03-14 | 48.0 KB | 1,498 lines

%%
"Life is full of doors that won't open when you knock, equally spaced
 among those that open when you don't want them to."

  --Roger Zelazny
%%
   "...Certain of the older grimoires recommend that the practitioners of
the magical arts, black or white, should ritually seal each of the nine
orifices of the body as part of the preliminaries.  I believe I now know
why."
   "My God, you don't mean--?" said Carruthers, but seemed to lack the
vocabulary or inclination to take the sentence furthur.  Hyphen-Jones
appeared to be counting under his breath.
   "Well, I'll be buggered," the Major murmured...

  --David Langford
%%
   "What the devil..." I exclaimed.
   Binet smiled, almost sweetly.  "Precisely," he said...

  --Leslie Halliwell
%%
   Using his crutch, rather proficiently he thought, he moved
purposefully on into the slick, black night.  His pantleg fluttered
crazily because it was empty, and for that very reason he paid it no
mind.

  --David S. Schow
%%
   I stand still in the room.  Far outside, footsteps flee.  They need
not fear.  I deal death where I will.  I lift my muzzle and am door
height.  Fire-coal falls and flares, and in the heat of the hearth the
old one watches.  She sees.  My pelt steams.  In her face, fear flickers
and I come closer.  She feels my breath in her face, fails to fight free,
and in a gasp is gone.

  --John Gordon
%%
   Most of the meat was beef and fowl.  But one long row of hooks down
the center held what he knew he would find--human carcasses, gutted and
cleaned and frozen, hanging head down, save that the heads were missing.

  --Robert A. Heinlein
%%
   The desire, the urge, the impulse to kill is in all of us.  It is as
old as life itself.  Nothing fills us with a greater sense of power, of
exhilaration, than killing.

  --Joseph Payne Brennan
%%
In Egypt is a worm gets into your kidneys and grows to enormous size.
Ultimately the kidney is just a thin shell around the worm.  Intrepid
gourmets esteem the flesh of The Worm above all other delicacies.  It is
said to be unspeakably toothsome...An Interzone coroner known as Autopsy
Ahmed made a fortune trafficking The Worm.

  --William Burroughs
%%
We are all Books of Blood
Wherever we're opened,
       We're red...

  --Clive Barker
%%
By a route obscure and lonely
Haunted by ill angels only
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule--
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE--out of TIME.

  --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
The clown turned his powdered face to the mirror. "If to be fair is to be
   beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"

"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."

"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from
   the mirror.

  --Robert W. Chambers
%%
   ...common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in
the cosmos-at-large...

  --H.P. Lovecraft
%%
   The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents.  We live on a placid island of
ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant
that we should voyage far.

  --H.P. Lovecraft
%%
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
   Headlights.  They were headlights.
   Headed directly at him.
   YOU CAN GO NOW, said a voice.

  --Dennis Etchison
%%
   "...and there's no law against talking in the dark..."

  --Dennis Etchison
%%
   This morning I put ground glass in my wife's eyes.  She didn't mind.
She didn't make a sound.  She never does.

   I have cut her arteries with stolen scalpels.  I have dug with an ice
pick deep into her brain, hoping to sever her motor centers.  I have
probed for her ganglia and nerve cords.  I have pierced her eardrums.  I
have inserted needles, trying to puncture her heart and lungs.  I have
hidden caustics in the folds of her throat.  I have ruined her eyes.  But
it's no use.  It will never be enough.

  --Dennis Etchison
%%
   Morningstar did not reply.  "You," said Jack.  "Have you looked upon
reality?"
   "I see clouds and falling stones.  I feel the wind."
   "But by them, somehow, you know other things."
   "I do not know everything."
   "But have you looked upon reality?"
   "I--Once...  I await the sunrise.  That is all."
   Jack stared into the east, watching the pink-touched clouds.  He
listened to falling stones and felt the wind, but there was no wisdom
there for him.

  --Roger Zelazny
%%
Oh, Jezebel, oh, Jezebel,
They hurled you from the wall,
And all the priests and prudes of Israel
Gave thanks to see you fall.

But I could laugh with Jezebel,
And kiss her on the lips,
And strip the scarf from off her breasts,
The girdle from her hips.

For I forswear Elijah,
Forget that Adam fell,
To press the waist of Lilith
And laugh with Jezebel.

  --Robert E. Howard
%%
   "He's in Hell with his neck broken."

  --Robert E. Howard
%%
   In the autopsy room Napier went to a metal tray lying on a table and,
using a pair of forceps,  picked up what appeared to be a large piece of
greyish, shrivelled paper.  "Know what this is?" he asked Thomas.
   At first he didn't, then he noticed that there was a length of long,
black hair attached to a section of the "paper" and he began to get a
nasty suspicion.
   Napier confirmed it.  "A human skin.  All that remains of an adult
female.  And there are hundreds more just like it."

  --Simon Ian Childer
%%
   "...You're a horribly sick man.  Your pores are full of little black
worms!  They kept creeping into your wounds!..."

  --Bruce Sterling
%%
   ...She was very surprised that she didn't find her tenant in his
rooms.  The only things she saw were his clothes, lying in disorder on
the floor, and a big plastic bag on the bed.  Angrily she picked up the
bag, and it felt wet and sticky and had red spots on it.  The bag
rattled, and she peered more closely and saw the bones through the
plastic.  But she definitely started to scream when she saw that part of
the bag had the flattened form of a man's face.

  --Eddy C. Bertin
%%
   "Sometimes we forget to blink."

  --T.E.D. Klein
%%
   "Then the geek bit off his head."

  --Robert Bloch
%%
Let me make you a present of song
As the Wise Man breaks wind and is gone...

  --Ian Anderson
%%
I'd like to axe the casket open
And view the bodies as they sleep
Forever wrapped in rotting silk
Where dark and viscid fluids seep...

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
The maggots fed within me as I wriggled and I squirmed
And my being was transformed into a fat and leprous worm...

  --HPl
%%
If I'm too rough, tell me
I'm so scared
Your little head will come off
In my hands...

  --A. Cooper
%%
   From behind, something that felt like a hand clasped him on the right
shoulder.
   "Harry?" he said hopefully.
   But it wasn't Harry.  And it wasn't a hand.

  --Simon Ian Childer
%%
"Wheeeeeee!" he screams, turning into Johnny.  Her neck snaps.  A great
fluid wave undulates through her body.  Johnny drops to the floor and
stands poised and alert like a young animal.

  --William Burroughs
%%
   Molly turned.  She crossed the room to Ashpool's chair.  The man's
breathing was slow and ragged.  She peered at the litter of drugs and
alcohol.  She put his pistol down, picked up her fletcher, dialed the
barrel over to single shot, and very carefully put a toxin dart through
the center of his closed left eyelid.  He jerked once, breath halting in
mid-intake.  His other eye, brown and fathomless, opened slowly.
   It was still open when she turned and left the room.

  --William Gibson
%%
Someone handed me this gun, and I
I gave it everything
Yeah, I gave it everything...

  --A. Cooper
%%
when the scarecrow's full and the moon turns its back
you crawl on your belly along the railroad track
and you cross your heart and hope to die
stick a needle in your eye
and he'd cut my bleedin' heart out if he found out i'd squealed
because, you see, a scarecrow's just a hoodlum
who marked the cards that he dealed
and pulled a gypsy switch
out on the edge of potter's field

  --Tom Waits
%%
Let me tell you the tale of your life
Of the thrust and the cut of the knife
The tireless oppression the wisdom instilled
The desire to kill and be killed

Let me sing of the losers who lie
In the street as the last bus goes by
The pavements are empty the gutters run red
While the fool toasts his god in the sky

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Won't you help me to pick up your dead
As the sins of the fathers are fed
With the blood of the fools and
The thoughts of the wise
And from the pan under your bed

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Oh, sunshine, take me now away from here
I'm a needle on a spiral in a groove
And the turntable spins as the Last Waltz begins
And the weather man says something's on the move

  --Ian Anderson
%%
I grabbed my hat and I got my coat
And I, I ran into the street
I saw a man who was choking there
I guess he couldn't breath
Said to myself, this is very strange
I'm glad it wasn't me...

  --A. Cooper
%%
    "...All turn their backs on you.  May your eyes cross.  May your
breasts droop and your bones bend.  I curse you with the curse of your
mother and your god.  May you have a hump on your back and warts on your
face.  May you be as withered and sterile as Vashti, as harsh as Deva.
The curse of all who worship the name of Suth be on you.  Bastard,
shuntali!  You are dead.  You do not exist."

  --Nancy Springer
%%
    'Rights' is a fictional abstract.  No one has 'rights', neither
machines or flesh-and- blood. Persons - both sorts! - have opportunities,
not rights, which they use or don't use.

  --Robert Heinlein
%%
    By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous
to man- man himself.  So he must supply his own indispensable
competition.  He has no enemy to help him.

  --Robert Heinlein
%%
    Get a shot off fast.  This upsets him long enough to let you make
your second shot perfect.

  --Robert Heinlein
%%
And now for the weather:

Tonight's forecast:  Dark.  Continued mostly dark until morning, when
there will be widely scattered light.

  --George Carlin
%%
The moon protruded into normal space, half submerged, sinking into a
shining lake.

  --George Zebrowski
%%
  Hands darted out.  Lindstrom squeaked like a frightened rat.  He was a
plump, sleek white rat, bursting with blood.  Vampires liked blood.
Blood from the rat, from the neck of the rat, from the vein in the neck
of the squeaking rat...

  --Robert Bloch
%%
He was a mean individual
He had a heart like a bone
He was a naturally crazy man
And better off left alone...

  --Paul Simon
%%
The worms carve their cruel designs,
Sayin' D-I-E into her skin
Sayin' DEATH into belly and
DEAD into shoulder
Well, last night I kissed her
But then death was upon her...

  --The Birthday Party
%%
She's as beautiful as a foot
She's as beautiful as a foot
She heard someone say
The other day

Couldn't believe it when he bit into her face
Couldn't believe it when he bit into her face
It tasted just like
A fallen arch...

She's as beautiful
Oh, so beautiful
Beautiful as a foot...

  --Bo'C
%%
When I was young, and they packed me off to school,
And taught me how not to play the game
I didn't mind if they groomed me for success (yech)
Or if they said that I was just a fool
So I left there in the morning
With their god tucked underneath my arm
Their half-assed smiles and the book of rules
Now to my old headmasters, or to anyone who cares
Before I'm through, I'd like to say my prayers:

I don't believe you; you've got the whole damn thing all wrong
He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday
Well, you can excommunicate me on my way to Sunday School
And have all the bishops harmonize these lines...

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Indian restaurants that curry my brain
Newspaper warriors changing their name
In the underpass, the blind man stands
With cold flute hands
Symphony wordseller, I'll be your headline
If you can catch me another time...

  --Ian Anderson
%%
      It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror
which the human mind can experience.  On the contrary, it seems that some
exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls--
as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good
many ways, to support the idea that when a nightmare grows black enough,
horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more
deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything.  And
the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human
mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelentful sanity.

  --Stephen King
%%
      And when the thousand years come to end, Satan shall be loosed out
of his Prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the
four quarters of the Earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for
battle; and the number of them are as the sands of the sea.  And they
went up upon the breadth of the Earth, surrounded the camp of the saints,
and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of Heaven and
devoured them!  And the Devil who deceived them was cast into the Lake of
Fire and brimstone, where the Beast and the False Prophet are, and shall
be tormented day and night forever and ever.

  --from the Book of Revelations
%%
"Willis," he gurglingly whispered, "I think this Tony Garcia is going to
be a problem--if we let him.  When this is over, remind me to think of a
suitable solution."
  The other nodded...And in his pure English he said: "Like sulphuric
acid?  That is a solution, isn't it?  I was always very bad at
chemistry."  His voice was cold as ice, so perfectly metrical as to be
almost mechanical.
  Khumeni chucked.  "That's what I like about you, Bernard Willis," he
said.  "Even your jokes are quite emotionless!"

  --Brian Lumley
%%
  The day, like a mess of silver dollars, fell upon the deck.  I landed
mine and hit it on the back of the head with the stick, just to be
merciful.
  I kept telling myself that I did not exist.  I hope it is true, even
though I feel that it is not.

  --Roger Zelazny
%%
  "God didn't do that!"  I shouted.  "YOU did it!"

  --Hunter S. Thompson
%%
  "Don't go NEAR that elevator," I said.  "That's just what they WANT us
to do...trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement."  I
looked over my shoulder, but nobody was following.

  --Hunter S. Thompson
%%
  "Well," he said, "as your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle."

  --Hunter S. Thompson
%%
  "Do not weep for the dead:  they are the lucky ones."

  --Mary Brown
%%
When you look into the abyss,
the abyss also looks into you.

  --Frederich Nietzsche
%%
        She sat in the concrete building, in an office with frosted
   glass partitions and barred windows, her fingers moving like praying
   mantises on the table.  Her eyes half-closed, she saw:
        A body.  The body of a woman.  The nude body of a young woman,
   the shiny flesh slipping from its bones, floating face up in a
   swimming pool.  What was left of the face.

     --Dennis Etchison
%%
        Louis (you could not call him Lou; it would be like calling
   Jesus Jess)...

     --Dean R. Koontz
%%
     And picked the gun off the newspapers, looked at it for a long
   moment, then dropped it in the drawer.  His hands began to shake.  On
   a world line very close to this one...
     And he picked the gun off the newspapers, put it to his head and
     fired.  The hammer fell on an empty chamber.
     fired.  The gun jerked up and blasted a hole in the ceiling
     fired.  The bullet tore a furrow in his scalp.
                        took off the top of his head.

     --Larry Niven
%%
   "If you withdraw your hand from the box you die.  This is the only
   rule.  Keep your hand in the box and live.  Withdraw it and die."

        "What's in the box?"
        "Pain."
        He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly
   together.  "How could this be a test?" he wondered.  The tingling
   became an itch.
        The old woman said:  "You've heard of animals chewing off a leg
   to escape a trap?  There's an animal kind of trick.  A human would
   remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might
   kill the trapper and remove the threat to his kind."
        The itch became the faintest burning.  "Why are you doing this?"
   he demanded.
        "To determine if you're human.  Be silent."

     --Frank Herbert
%%
   They took my mate; I take their lives.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
   His hand had been formed to end in a knife.  Anything else would have
   been wrong, all wrong.

     --Harlan Ellison
%%
   The ship quivered.  Weight grabbed at Reymount.  He barely avoided
   falling to the deck.  A metal noise toned through the hull, like a
   basso profundo gong.  It was soon over.  Free flight resumed.  The
   "Leonora Christina" had gone through another galaxy...

     --Poul Anderson
%%
        "Sometimes we forget to blink."

     --T.E.D. Klein
%%
   The night set softly, with the hush of falling leaves
   Casting shivering shadows on the houses through the trees
   And the light from a streetlamp paints a pattern on my wall
   Like the pieces of a puzzle, or a child's uneven scrawl.

   Up a narrow flight of stairs in a narrow little room
   As I lie upon my bed in the early evening gloom
   Impaled on my wall, my eyes can dimly see
   The pattern of my life and the puzzle that is me.

   From the moment of my birth to the instant of my death
   There are patterns I must follow just as I must breathe each breath
   Like a rat in a maze the path before me lies
   And the pattern never alters until the rat dies.

   The pattern still remains on the wall where darkness fell
   And it's fitting that it should for in darkness I must dwell
   Like the color of my skin, or the day that I grow old
   My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled.

     --Paul Simon
%%
   Day of judgement, God is calling
   On their knees the war pigs crawling
   Begging mercy for their sins
   Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.

     --Black Sabbath
%%
   And if my voice starts suddenly shaking
   Don't be confused anymore
   It's just the sound of my heart breaking
   Ship-to-shore.

   S.O.S....

     --Tim Curry
%%
   I love the dead before they're cold,
   Their bluing flesh for me to hold.
   Cadaver eyes upon me see...nothing.
   I love the dead before they rise,
   No farewells, no goodbyes.
   I never even knew your rotting face.
   While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave
   I have other uses for you, Darling

   I love the dead....

     --B. Ezrin/A. Cooper
%%
   Sundown, dazzling day
   Go through my eyes
   But my eyes, turned within
   Only see
   Starless and Bible Black

   Old friend, charity
   Cruel twisted smile
   And the smile signals emptiness
   For me
   Starless and Bible Black

   Ice blue silver sky
   Fades into grey
   To a grey hope that omens
   To be
   Starless and Bible Black

     --Cross, Fripp, Wetton, Bruford & Palmer-James
%%
   You see it really doesn't matter
   When you're buried in disguise
   By the dark glass on your eyes,
   Though your flesh has crystallised;
   Still...you turn me on.

     --Greg Lake
%%
   I wake up in the basement,
   I'm so hungry,
   I'm dry.
   I must be here sleepwalking,
   Musn't I?
   Getting up from my easy chair looking for
   my wife following a trail of crimson
   spots that lead into the night.
   Suddenly I realize,
   I see it all through real eyes these crimson
   spots are dripping from my hand
   And oh...it makes me feel like a man.

     --Alice Cooper
%%
   And not content with that, with our hands behind our backs,
   We pull Jesus from a hat.
   Get into that!  Get into that!

     --Greg Lake
%%
   All my toys are broken and
   So am I inside mom....

     --Alice Cooper
%%
   I am the Axe-man of New Orleans
   The mad Overlord of unpleasant dreams
   The hot fountains of scarlet will splatter
   As I wade through cascades of grey matter
   Warm summer nights will echo with screams
   For I am the Axe-man of New Orleans.

     --Anonymous Bosch
%%
   He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
   Excitable boy, they all said
   And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home
   Excitable boy, they all said
   Well, he's just an exitable boy
   After ten long years they let him out of the Home
   Excitable boy, they all said
   And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones....

     --LeRoy Marinell and Warren Zevon
%%
   Love is not a game
   Love is not a toy
   Love's no romance
   Love will do you in
   And love will wash you out
   And needless to say
   You won't stand a chance, and you won't stand a chance....

     --Paul Simon
%%
   The poets know that justice is a lie,
   That good and light are baubles filled with dust--
   This world's slave-market where swine sell and buy,
   This shambles where the howling cattle die,
   Has blinded not their eyes with lies and lust.

   Ring up the demons from the lower Pit,
   Since Evil conquers goodness in the end;
   Break down the Door and let the fires be lit,
   And greet each slavering monster as a friend.

   Let obscene shapes of Darkness ride the earth,
   Let sacrificial smokes blot out the skies,
   Let dying virgins glut the Black God's eyes,
   And all the world resound with noisome mirth.

   Break down the altars, let the streets run red,
   Tramp down the race into the crawling slime;
   Then where red Chaos lifts her serpent head,
   The Fiend be praised, we'll pen the perfect rime.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
        "He was a man," said Conan.  "I drink to his shade, and to the
   shade of the dog, who knew no fear."  He quaffed part of the wine,
   then emptied the rest upon the floor, with a curious heathen
   gesture.  "The heads of ten Picts shall pay for his, and seven heads
   for the dog, who was a better warrior than many a man."

        "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind," the borderer said,
   still staring somberly at the Cimmerian.  "Civilization is
   unnatural.  It is a whim of circumstance.  And barbarism must always
   ultimately triumph."

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
        "...Conan, do you fear the gods?"
        "I would not tread on their shadow," answered the barbarian...

    --Robert E. Howard
%%
        He glanced at the stiff corpses about the beach, at the charred
   embers of the skalli and the glowing timbers of the galley.  In the
   glare the priest seemed unearthly in his thinness and whiteness,
   like a saint from some old illuminated manuscript.  In his worn
   pallid face was a more than human sadness, a greater than human
   weariness.
        "Look!" he cried suddenly, pointing seaward.  "The ocean is of
   blood!  See how it swims red in the rising sun!  Oh, my people, my
   people, the blood you have spilt in anger turns the very seas to
   scarlet!  How can you win through?"
        "I came in the snow and sleet," said Turlough, not
   understanding at first.  "I go as I came."
        The priest shook his head.  "It is more than a mortal sea.
   Your hands are red with blood and you follow a red sea-path, yet the
   fault is not wholly with you.  Almighty God, when will the reign of
   blood cease?"
        Turlough shook his head.  "Not so long as the race lasts."

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
   The little poets sing of little things:
   Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings;
   Lovers who kissed and then were made as one,
   And modest flowers waving in the sun.

   The mighty poets write in blood and tears
   And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.
   They reach their mad blind hands into the night,
   To plumb abysses dead to human sight;
   To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,
   Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
         Conan put his back against the wall and lifted the ax.  He
   stood like an image of the unconquerable primordial--legs braced far
   apart, head thrust forward, one hand clutching the wall for support,
   the other gripping the ax on high, with the great corded muscles
   standing out in iron ridges, and his features frozen in a death
   snarl of fury--his eyes blazing terribly through the mist of blood
   which veiled them.  The men faltered--wild, criminal, and dissolute
   though they were, yet they came of a breed men called civilized,
   with a civilized background; here was the barbarian--the natural
   killer.  They shrank back--the dying tiger could still deal death.
         Conan sensed their uncertainty and grinned mirthlessly and
   ferociously.
         "Who dies first?" he mumbled through smashed and bloody lips.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
         "Men shall die for this," he said coldly.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
        "By this axe I rule!  This is my sceptre!..."

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
   All fled, all done, now lift me on the pyre
   The feast is over and the lamps expire.

     --Robert E. Howard
%%
The ice-cream lady wet her drawers, to see you in the Passion Play:

  --Ian Anderson
%%
All of your best friends' telephones never cooled from the heat of your
hand.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Actor of the low-high Q, let's hear your view.
Peek at the lines upon your sleeve since your memory won't do.
Tell me / how the baby's graded / why the lady's faded / why the old dog
howls with madness.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
God of Ages / Lord of Time-----mine is the right to be wrong.
Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs.
Jack rabbit mister-----spawn a new breed of love hungry pilgrims (no
bodies to feed).
Show me a good man.
I'll show you the door.
The last hymn is sung and the devil cries More.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Hair stands high on the cat's back like
  a ridge of threatening hills.
Sheepdogs howl, make tracks and growl--
  their tails hanging low.
And young children falter in their games
  at the altar of life's hide-and-seek
  between tall pillars, where Sunday-night killers
  in grey raincoats peek.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Clear light on a slick palm
  as I mis-deal the day
Slip the night from a shaved pack
  make a marked card play
Call twilight hours down
  from a heaven home
  high above the highest bidder
  for the good Lord's throne
In the wee hours I'll meet you
  down by Dun Ringill--
  watch the old gods play
  by Dun Ringill

  --Ian Anderson
%%
She wore a black tiara
  rare gems upon her fingers
  and she came from distant waters
  where Northern Lights explode
  to celebrate the dawning
  of the new wastes of winter
  gathering royal momentum
  on the icy road.
With chill mists swirling
  like petticoats in motion
  sighted on horizons
  for ten thousand years
  the Lady of the Ice sounds
  a deathly distant rumble
  to Titanic-breaking children lost
  in melting crystal tears.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Keep your eyes open and prick up your ears--
  rehearse your loudest cry.
There's folk out there who would do you harm
  so I'll sing you no lullaby.
There's a lock on the window; there's a chain on the door:
  a big dog in the hall.
But there's dragons and beasties out there in the night
  to snatch you if you fall.

It's as well we tell no lie
  to chase the face that cries--
And little birds can't fly
  so keep an open eye.
It's as well we tell no lie
  so I'll sing you no lullaby.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
I saw Him in the city and on the mountains of the moon--
His cross was rather bloody--He could hardly roll His stone.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Let me bring you all things refined:
Galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale.
Greetings, well-met fellow, hail!
I am the wind to fill your sail.
I am the cross to take your nail:
     A singer of these ageless times--
     With kitchen prose and gutter rhymes.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
And the crowd thins and he moves up close but he doesn't speak
I have to look the other way
But curiousity gets the better part of me and I peek
Got two drinks in his hand--see his lips move
  what the Hell's he trying to say?

  --Ian Anderson
%%
In high-rise city canyons dwells the discontent of ages
On ring roads, nose to bumper crawl commuters in their cages
Cryptic signals flash across from pilots in the fast lane
Double-locked and belted in--too late to make the Clasp.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Shout--but you see it still won't do
With my colours on I can be just as bad as you

  --Ian Anderson
%%
I have no time for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone.
I have no wish for wishing wells or wishing bones.
I have no house in the country I have no motor-car.
And if you think I'm joking, then I'm just a one-line
  joker in a public bar.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
There was a little boy stood on a burning log,
  rubbing his hands with glee.  He said, Oh Mother England
  did you light my smile:  or did you light
  this fire under me?
One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery.
And paint you a picture of the queen.
And if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree--
It's just the nonsense that it seems.
So I drift down the Baker Street valley,
  in my steep-sided un-reality.
And when all's said and all's done--I couldn't wish
  for a better one.
It's a real-life ripe dead-certainty--
That I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
     Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.  For them are the
catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare
countries.  They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles,
and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of
forgotten cities in Asia.  The haunted wood and the desolate mountain
are their shrines and they linger around the sinister monoliths of
uninhabited islands.  But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a
new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification
of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of
backwoods regions; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude,
grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the
hideous.

  --H.P.Lovecraft
%%
     ...common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance
in the cosmos-at-large....
  --H.P.Lovecraft
%%
     There is in the land of Mnar a vast still lake that is fed by no
stream, and out of which no stream flows.  Ten thousand years ago there
stood by its shore the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath stands there
no more.

  --H.P.Lovecraft
%%
     There's a Hell of a floor show
     At Lucifer's Bar and Grill
     A three-ring circus of Sex and Death
     For people with time to kill
     If you're seeking employment,
     For heaven's sake, drop in
     Satan is paying his new recruits
     The minimum wages of sin...

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
Nick the stripper
Hideous to the eye
Hideous to the eye
He's just a fat little inSECT
A fat little inSECT
A fat little inSECT...

  --The Birthday Party
%%
In Heaven
Everything is fine
In Heaven
Everything is fine
In Heaven
Everything is fine:
You've got your good thing,
And you've got mine...

  --from Eraserhead
%%
I must confess this burden of guilt that's tearing me to pieces
I was eatin' worms and spreadin' germs, and various diseases...

I loped along the bayou like an old hound dog
when the smell of frogs was in the wind
They were soft and cold and dripping
And I loved to feel them slipping
Right out of their flacid froggy skins
Yes, I was a teenage toadsucker
I was a teenage toadsucker
I was a teenage toadsucker
Before I discovered Jesus...

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
White-on-white, swans in the snow
Black-on-black, cats eating crow
The lack of contrast bores me so
White-on-white, swans in the snow

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
My parents don't suspect that I am a baby born insane
With a sleek and shining viper writhing in my veins...

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
And upon her purple panties a thousand faces leered:
There was Jesus, there was Elvis, there was even Paul Revere!

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
Now I'm livin' in a pay toilet
Twenty cents a day
You can laugh all you want, bitch
But it's a great place to stay.

  --Anonymous Bosch
%%
What time didn't steal from under your nose, circumstance did.  It was
useless to hope otherwise, useless to dream that the world somehow meant
you good.  Everything of value, everything you clung to for your sanity,
would rot or be snatched in the long run, and the abyss would gape beneath
you, as it gaped for Boone now, and suddenly, without so much as a breath
of explanation, you were gone.

  --Clive Barker
%%
Only then did he drop one hand to his side, blood dripping from hook and
wrist, the other moving across his face to seek the flap of skin his work
had opened.
  "You want to see," he said again.
  Boone murmured.
  "Don't."
  It went unheard.  With a sharp, upward jerk, Narcisse detached the mask
of skin from the muscle beneath, and began to tear, uncovering his true
face...

  --Clive Barker
%%
In the antiseptic cocoon of his room, Stumpf felt the first blast of
unclean air from the outside world.  It was no more than a light breeze
that invaded his makeshift sanctuary, but it bore upon its back the debris
of the world.  Soot and seeds, flakes of skin itched off a thousand
scalps, fluff and sand and twists of hair, the bright dust from a moth's
wing.  Motes so small the human eye only glimpsed them in a shaft of white
sunlight, each a tiny whirling speck quite harmless to most living
organisms.  But this cloud was lethal to Stumpf; in seconds his body
became a field of tiny, seeping wounds...

  --Clive Barker
%%
...Such instruments!  Byron was there, his bones sucked clean and drilled
with stops, his bladder and lungs teased through slashes in his body as
reservoirs for the piper's breath.  He was draped, inverted, across the
musician's lap, and even now was played upon--the sacs ballooning, the
tongueless head giving out a wheezing note.  Dorothea was slumped beside
him, no less transformed, the strings of her gut made taut between her
splinted legs like an obscene lyre...
  "I didn't take you for a music lover," Butterfield said, drawing upon
his cigarette and smiling in welcome...

  --Clive Barker
%%
  The rivers are full of crocodile nasties
  And He Who made kittens put snakes in the grass
  He's a Lover of life, but a Player of pawns
  Yes, the King on His sunset lies waiting for dawn
  To light up His jungle as play is resumed
  The monkeys seem willing to strike up the tune...

    --Ian Anderson
%%
  Rock kills
  Rock kills
  And it's killin' me right now
  I don't have to take no pills...

    --Anonymous Bosch
%%
  My my, hey hey
  Rock and roll is here to stay
  It's better to burn out
  Than to fade away
  My my, hey hey...

    --Neil Young
%%
  Follow me, maggot, from off your dull sphere
  And I'll tell you a Tale you were not meant to hear
  I'll show you a Sight that will drive you insane
  And whisper a Truth that will burn out your brain...

    --HPl
%%
  Then one day he was double-crossed
  Perhaps his powers failed
  They caught him praying in the park
  And this time he was nailed
  But his followers wouldn't let him die
  "A god can't die,"  they said
  So instead of putting him in the ground
  They put him in your head...

  Crucifixion (Fiction!)

     --Anonymous Bosch
%%
  And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the
  cavity of the tomb and laughed.  And I could not laugh with the Demon,
  and he cursed me because I could not laugh.  And the lynx which
  dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the
  feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.

     --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
  And all should shout, "Beware!  Beware!
   His golden eyes, his flaxen hair!
   Weave a circle round him thrice
   And close your eyes in holy dread
   For he on honeydew hath fed
   And drunk the milk of Paradise!"

     --Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
  A stately pleasure-dome decree
  Where Alf, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man
  Down to the sunless sea.

     --Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
  "Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more!  I admit the deed! -- tear
  up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous
  heart!"

     --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
   ...And the flames of the tripods expired.  And Darkness and Decay and
   the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

     --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of
our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell--but the imagination
of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern.  Alas!
the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether
fanciful--but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage
down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us--they must be
suffered to slumber, or we perish.

  --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
   "Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
   "For the love of God, Montresor!"
   "Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

  --Edgar Allen Poe
%%
Tread the road 'cross the abyss
Take a look down at the madness
In the streets of the city
Only spectres still have pity
Patient queues for the gallows
Sing the praises of the hallowed
Our machines feed the furnace
If they take us
                they will burn us

  --Greg Lake
%%
With sadness on your shoulders
Like a worn-out overcoat
In pockets creased and tattered
Hang the rags of your hope
The daybreak is your midnight
The colors have all died
Disturbing the waters
Of our lives...

  --Greg Lake
%%
He took the knife from his pocket
Pushed the button on its side
When he seen the clean steel
You ought to seen the light in Freddy's eyes...

  --Mark Farner
%%
My Lady, be discreet
I must get to my feet
And go back to the farm
Whilst I appreciate
You are no deviate
I might come to some harm
I'm not inclined to acts refined
If that's how it goes
Oh, High-Born Hunting Girl
I'm just a normal low-born so-and-so.

  --Ian Anderson
%%
"You don't get it, boy.  This isn't a mudhole, it's an operating table.
And I'm the surgeon."

Something tells me to stop with the leg.  I don't listen to it.

  --Frank Miller
%%
It takes nearly a minute to fall from this height.  And despite what you
may have heard, you're likely to stay conscious all the way down.

Thoughts like that keep me warm at night.

  --Frank Miller
%%
With a devil's strength he twists...and twists...  What's left of his
spine goes.

Whatever's in him rustles as it leaves.

  --Frank Miller
%%
They could put me in a helicopter and fly me up into the air and line
the bodies head-to-toe on the ground in delightful geometric patterns
like an endless June Taylor Dancers routine -- and it would never be
enough.

No, I don't keep count.  But you do.

And I love you for it.

  --Frank Miller
%%
The Blackbird's insanity makes him unable to lie.  It makes him consult
with horses, pigs, dogs, finches; long conversations.  He hears their
voices.  Insanity causes his celibacy.  He fears children; or rather, he
fears fathering them.  Were a daughter or granddaughter to climb on his
knee and ask what he did in the war, the Blackbird would say:  "I killed
little girls just like you.  They got in the way."

  --Jack Cady
%%
That night, the two vigilant fire wardens had, in effect, burned to
death.  Ray Sarch was found in the little control room, his head torn
off and cast into the far corner, where it sat on a ragged stump of neck
in a pool of congealed blood, staring into the corner with wide, glazed
eyes, as if there were actually something there to see.

  --Stephen King
%%
...faranno dei cimiteri le loro cattedrali
             e delle citta le vostre tombe.

  --Dario Argento

(...for the cemetaries shall be their cathedrals
              and the cities shall be your tombs.)
%%
You're so very picturesque
You're so very cold
Tastes like roses on your breath
But graveyards on your soul...

<Afterwards...>

You're so very ordinary
You're so very lame
Tastes like whiskey on your lips
And earthworms rule your brain...

  --A. Cooper
%%
Walking down the gutter thinking
"How the Hell am I today?"
Well, I didn't really ask you
But thanks all the same

(later)

Walking down the gutter stinking
Winking in that same old way
I try to catch my eye
But I look the other way

  --Ian Anderson
%%
Get ready for the lady
She's gonna be a treat
Simmer slightly till ready
Make her soft, too, make her sweet
I kiss the tears off from your chest
I've felt the poisoned life that's in your breast
I know your precious life and I know your death
I squeeze the love out of your soul
All the precious love that's in your soul
You're just another spirit on parole
Devil's Food, you are
Devil's Food, you are
Devil's Food!

  --A. Cooper
%%
I came into this life
Looked all around
I saw just what I liked and
Took what I found
Nothin' came easy
Nothin' came free
Nothin' came at all until
They came after me...

  --A. Cooper
%%
Little Betty ate a pound of aspirin
She got them from the shelf upon the wall
Betty's mommy wasn't there to save her
She didn't even hear the baby's call...

Dead babies can take care of themselves
Dead babies can't take things off the shelves
Well, we didn't love you anyway...

  --A. Cooper
%%
...and here, my prize, the Black Widow.
Isn't she lovely?  And so deadly!
Her kiss is fifteen times as poisonous as that of the rattlesnake.
You see, her venom is highly neurotoxic, which is to say that it attacks
the central nervous system, causing intense pain, profuse sweating,
difficulty in breathing, violent convulsions, loss of consciousness, and
finally, uh...
Death.

  --Vinnie, from "Welcome to my Nightmare"
%%
I get so angry when the teardrops start
Well, he can't be wounded cause he's got no heart

Watchin' the detectives
Watchin' the defectives...

  --Elvis Costello
%%
I have come to chew bubble gum and kick ass.







And I'm all out of bubble gum.

    --Rowdy Roddy, from "They Live"
%%
  "You're going to tell me everything you know, sooner or later.
  "If it's later--I won't mind."

    --Frank Miller
%%
  "You've got a lot of teeth left.  And I haven't even touched your
tongue..."

  "S...Solid, man...I'll tell you...deal is...no cops, man...I
walk...what do you say, man?"

  "I don't think you understand your situation.  You're not in a
position to negotiate.  Let me show you..."


  It was tough work, carrying two hundred and twenty pounds of sociopath
to the top of Gotham Towers--the highest spot in the city.

  The scream alone is worth it.

    --Frank Miller
%%
  As we part, Jim squeezes my shoulder and grins.  "You just need a
woman," he says.

  ...while in my gut the creature writhes and snarls and tells me what I
need...

    --Frank Miller
%%
  There are seven working defenses from this position.  Three of them
disarm with minimal contact.  Three of them kill.  The other--hurts.

    --Frank Miller
%%
It's just not fair, he thought.  Not fair.  He struggled to control the
spasm.  Fairness has nothing to do with it, he argued back at himself.
The cancer is eating my lungs.  It is neither right nor wrong, fair nor
unfair.  It is what cancer does.
    "Now do what you're supposed to do," he said to himself, out loud.
His voice was weak, but he didn't begin to cough again.  A small victory
on the way to total defeat.

    --Garfield Reeves-Stevens
%%
I don't know what sort of president he'd make.  He talks and talks and
talks.  He'd make a helluva wife.
    --Groucho Marx, on Hubert Humphrey
%%
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to
Hell.
    --Igor Stravinsky
%%
The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning.
    --Stanley Kubrick
%%
Sounds like there's too much chlorine in your genetic pool.
%%
We look
    into the eyes
Of those
    we have killed
And wonder
    why they do not thank us.

  --David J. Schow
%%
Can you see it, Joker?  Feels to me like it's written all over my face.
I've lain awake nights...planning it...picturing it.  Endless nights.
Considering every possible method.  Treasuring each imaginary moment.

From the beginning, I knew that there's nothing wrong with you that I
can't fix with my hands...

  --Frank Miller
%%
We are, in fact, fumbling around in the dark.  Nobody's in control.
There is only the appearance of control or, on the part of individual
people, the delusion of control.

  --David Cronenberg
%%
On reading Clive Barker, I know how Elvis Presley felt the first time
he heard the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

  --Stephen King
%%
Death touches us all in different ways.  Some barely feel its passing.
Others, it strikes right in the face.

  --Jim Starlin
%%
Religion, he decided, was indeed a tissue of falsehoods, just as he'd
feared.  But those falsehoods served a useful purpose.  They gave
meaning to the mundanities of daily life.  People needed more to their
existence than washing the dishes and taking out the trash.  They needed
to feel they were part of a great drama, a drama played out on an epic
scale, a clash of good and evil; and religion gave them that drama,
illustrated by symbols, dramatized in stories, and acted out in timeless
rituals.  His job was merely to keep the show going.  Belief was
irrelevant.

  --Douglas Borton
%%
  One of them spoke now.  "Hey, look at the coffin; the lid's all
splintered."
  He slid it back, then gasped.
  It was his gasp that caused Vera to look up, then run forward and peer
down into the grave, into the open coffin and the moldering outline of
what lay within:  a fully articulated skeleton, the skull mouth frozen
in a ghastly grin.
  Cradled in its bony arm was David's head.

  --Robert Bloch
%%
  The world ended on May 17, 1988.  But the Lakers were playing an
important game, and nobody even noticed.

  --Robert Bloch
%%
  Thank you, darling.  Thank you for making me happy with the gift of
your love.
  I only wish now that I hadn't killed you first.

  --Robert Bloch
%%
  Stooping, I picked it up, and now I noticed the stains on the rusty
blade--the red stains slowly oozing in tiny droplets to the floor.
  For a moment I fancied that I could actually hear them fall, then
realized they were too minute and too few to account for the steady
dripping sound that came from--
  It was at that moment that Santiago must have shot himself in the
other room, but it was not the sudden sound which prompted my scream.
  I stared at the Christmas tree, at the twinkling lights twining gaily
across its huge boughs, and at the oddly shaped ornaments draped and
affixed to its spiky branches.  Stared, and screamed, because the madman
had told the truth.
  Louise was decorating the Christmas tree.

  --Robert Bloch