Thomas Ligotti Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.

Thomas Ligotti
Amnesia may well be the highest sacrament in the great gray ritual of existence.

Thomas Ligotti
... one must take into account the shocking fact that we live on a world that spins. After considering this truth, nothing should come as a surprise.

Thomas Ligotti
The finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic.

Thomas Ligotti
It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense.

Thomas Ligotti
Nature proceeds by blunders; that is its way. It is also ours. So if we have blundered by regarding consciousness as a blunder, why make a fuss over it? Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. What do we have to lose? No evil would attend our departure from this world, and the many evils we have known would go extinct along with us. So why put off what would be the most laudable masterstroke of our existence, and the only one?

Thomas Ligotti
My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?

Thomas Ligotti
If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

Thomas Ligotti
The major part of our species seems able to undergo any trauma without significantly re-examining its household mantras, including everything happens for a reason, the show must go on, accept the things you cannot change, and any other adage that gets people to keep their chins up.

Thomas Ligotti
We are each either among the demoralized showing the way to a future of eternal nightmare, or we are losers celebrating our moment in hell.

Thomas Ligotti
As for procreation, no one in his right mind would say that it is the only activity devoid of a praiseworthy incentive. Those who reproduce, then, should not feel unfairly culled as the worst conspirators against the human race. Every one of us is culpable in keeping the conspiracy alive, which is all right with most people.

Thomas Ligotti
We, as licensed protectors of the species and members in good standing of the master-class of the race, by the power invested in us by those who wish to survive and reproduce, vow to enforce the fiction that life is worth having and worth living come hell or irreparable brain damage.

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

Thomas Ligotti
No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.

Thomas Ligotti
One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.

Thomas Ligotti
For the rest of the earth's organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else.

Thomas Ligotti
Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture- one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce- rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.

Thomas Ligotti
This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.

Thomas Ligotti