Clive Barker Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

Let the mad find wisdom in their madness for the sane, and let the sane be grateful.

Clive Barker
Here is a list of fearful things:
The jaws of sharks, a vulture's wings,
The rabid bite of the dog's of war,
The voice of one who went before.
But most of all the mirror's gaze,
which counts us out our numbered days.

Clive Barker
There's no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn't know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat.

Clive Barker
Are you coming? he said.
In a moment.
It's now or never.
Maybe it would be never, then. She was so transfixed by the formidable power being unleashed in front of her, she couldn't avert her astonished gaze. It fascinated her that strength of this magnitude should be turned to the sordid business of atrocity; something was wrong with a reality that made that possible, and offered no cure for it, nor hope of cure.

Clive Barker
Flesh is our indisputable commonality. Whatever our race, our religion, our politics we are faced every morning with the fact of our bodies. Their frailties, their demands, their desires. And yet the erotic appetites that spring from - and are expressed through - those bodies, are so often a source of bitter dissension and division. Acts that offer a glimpse of transcendence to one group are condemned by another. We are pressured from every side - by peers, by church, by state - to accept the consensual definition of taboo; though so often what excites our imaginations most is the violation of taboo.

Clive Barker
To dream in isolation can be properly splendid to be sure; but to dream in company seems to me infinitely preferable.

Clive Barker
True joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.

Clive Barker
So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.

Clive Barker
It was absurd and frustrating, to feel so much and know so little.

Clive Barker
Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing.

Clive Barker
Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy.

Clive Barker
Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.

Clive Barker
"Magic is the first and last religion of the world. It has the power to make us whole, to open our eyes to the Dominions and return us to ourselves. Everything that isn't us is also ourselves. We're joined to everything that was, is and will be. From one end of the Imajica to another. From the tiniest mote dancing over this flame to the Godhead Itself.

Clive Barker
The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there'd be no show at all.

Clive Barker
The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, "let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible." I have lingered, of course.

Clive Barker
Suzanna didn't wait for confirmation. There was no use disbelieving the worst now.

Clive Barker
Being with people makes me vomit. I don't like em. I never did.

Clive Barker
Did I say that she was beautiful? I was wrong. Beauty is too tame a notion; it evokes only faces in magazines. A lovely eloquence, a calming symmetry; none of that describes this woman's face. So perhaps I should assume I cannot do it justice with words. Suffice it to say that it would break your heart to see her; and it would mend what was broken in the same moment; and you would be twice what you'd been before.

Clive Barker
She had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon.

Clive Barker
Godhood called, and he went, fleet-footed, to worship at his own altar.

Clive Barker
Of course, there was Hobart. The Inspector was probably insane, but that was all to the good. And he had one particular aspiration which Shadwell knew he might one day need to turn to his own ends. That was, to lead—as Hobart put it—a righteous crusade.

Clive Barker
I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

Clive Barker
Non-fiction contains facts, fiction contains truth.

Clive Barker
Movies are much more fascist than books. They tell you what to feel, when to feel it. Popular movies manipulate you. Music tells you when it's a sad part and when it's a happy part. You're obliged to watch them at the speed the filmmaker has created for you. That, I think, is one of the reasons why they're so popular - because you don't have to think very hard. The filmmaker has done all the thinking for you.

Clive Barker
Memory, prophecy and fantasy
the past, the future and
the dreaming moment between
are all one country,
living one immortal day.

To know that is Wisdom.

To use it is the Art.

Clive Barker
Well, it was most likely too late; there would not be time for me to flagellate myself for every dishonorable deed in that list, nor any chance to make good the harms I'd done. Minor harms, to be sure, in the scheme of things; but large enough to regret.

Clive Barker
Always the sightseers: open-mouthed, disbelieving. There was a force for desolation loose in their midst which could consume their lives at a glance, surely they could see that? But they'd watch anyway, willing to embrace the void if it came with sufficient razzmatazz.

Clive Barker
As to the remnants of his army—those Seerkind who'd embraced the Prophet's visions—they'd been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.

Clive Barker
Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite

Clive Barker
Among their members were some of the wealthiest individuals in the world; between them, fortunes sufficient to trade in nations. None of the seven had a name that would have meant anything to the hoi polloi—they were, like the truly mighty, anonymously great.

Clive Barker