Clive Barker Quotes

Clive Barker is an English writer, film director, and visual artist. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories, the Books of Blood, which established him as a leading horror writer. He has since written many novels and other works, and his fiction has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser and Candyman series. He was the Executive Producer of the film Gods and Monsters.

Barker's paintings and illustrations have been featured in galleries in the United States as well as within his own books. He has created original characters and series for comic books, and some of his more popular horror stories have been adapted to comics.

His archives have been a source of material for biographies and non-fiction books containing his personal essays, discussions of his fringe theatre work, interviews, and other content.

✵ 5. October 1952  •  Other names کلایو بارکر

Clive Barker photo

Steven Friederich, CliveIMG_0690 / CC BY 2.0

Works

Abarat

Abarat

Clive Barker

Weaveworld

Weaveworld

Clive Barker

Imajica

Imajica

Clive Barker

Abarat

Abarat

Clive Barker

Weaveworld

Weaveworld

Clive Barker

Imajica

Imajica

Clive Barker

Clive Barker: 101 quotes7 likes

Famous Clive Barker Quotes

“Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Source: Weaveworld

“What can be imagined—
—need never be lost.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Part Nine “Into the Gyre”, Chapter iii “The Miracle of the Loom” (p. 429; catchphrase frequently repeated)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE
Source: Weaveworld

“I've learned two things in my life. One that love is the beginning and end of all meaning. And two that it is the same thing whatever shape our souls have taken on this journey. Love is love. Is love.”

“We're both thieves, Harvey Swick. I take time. You take lives. But in the end we're the same: both Thieves of Always.”

Clive Barker book The Thief of Always

Source: The Thief of Always

“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: Love, Death, & the Whole Damned Thing", Locus (1995)

“Give me B movies or give me death!”

Clive Barker Quotes about love

“A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

“Wherever I go, I will speak of you with love.”

Clive Barker book The Thief of Always

Source: The Thief of Always

“Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love”

“We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.”

Clive Barker book Absolute Midnight

Source: Absolute Midnight

“You'll learn, honey. Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than "I'll never leave you.”

Clive Barker book Cabal

Source: Cabal

Clive Barker Quotes about people

“Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.”

“you must be careful with kindness. It's usually mistaken for weakness by stupid people.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“One of the reasons why I don't get on with most fantasy writing - enchanted sword fantasy writing - is because I think it's emotionally untrue. People behave in very simple ways, unparadoxical ways. What I'm trying to do is bring into fantasy - as I hope I've been able to bring to horror - a certain kind of emotional realism. People have mentioned sex as being a major part of my fiction. An awful lot of horror fiction simply never contained that kind of material. Which seems to me to be extraordinary because most horror fiction is about the body in some way or other, and therefore it should be about sensuality and eroticism every bit as much as it's about corruption.”

Writer's Digest, March 1991

“We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.”

Foreword: Books of Blood 1-3

“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.
American Heroes #174

“Perhaps there was a natural process at work here; a means by which the mind dealt with experiences that contradicted a lifetime’s prejudices about the nature of reality. People simple forgot.”

Part Seven “The Demagogue”, Chapter vi “Hello, Stranger”, Section 2 (p. 307)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

Clive Barker: Trending quotes

“We’re too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

“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

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever we're opened, we're red.”

Clive Barker's Books of Blood
Source: Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

Clive Barker Quotes

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”

“No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

“It’s only when you’ve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that
phrase “It’s a small world”. It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.”

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

“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 Days of Magic, Nights of War

Abarat, Book One
Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“To call you excrement would be an insult to the product of my bowels.”

Clive Barker book Mister B. Gone

Source: Mister B. Gone

“One man's pornography is another man's theology.”

“We burn so hard, but we shed so little light; it makes us crazy and sad.”

Clive Barker book Galilee

Source: Galilee

“Life is short,
and pleasures few,
and holed the ship,
and drowned the crew,
But O! But O!
How very blue
the sea is!”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Abarat, Book One

“Writing about the unholy is one way of writing about what is sacred.”

“Superman is, after all, an alien life form. He is simply the acceptable face of invading realities.”

“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 book Cabal

Source: Cabal

“She had opened a door… and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge… Pain had made a sadist of her.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

“Three is the number of those who do holy work;

Two is the number of those who do lover's work;

One is the number of those who do perfect evil

Or perfect good.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“I dreamt a limitless book,
A book unbound,
Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance
On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
New heavens supposed;
New states, new souls.”

“…there’s nothing in the world more fun than doing something you’re good at.”

Clive Barker book Galilee

Source: Galilee

“Flesh could not keep its glamour, nor eyes their sheen. They would go to nothing soon. But monsters are forever.”

“Welcome to the worst nightmare of all, reality!”

“Words are sexier than flesh.”

“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.
Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd benews?”

Clive Barker book The Great and Secret Show

Source: The Great and Secret Show

“Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.”

Clive Barker book The Thief of Always

Source: The Thief of Always

“Witch, do this for me,
Find me a moon
made of longing.
Then cut it sliver thin,
and having cut it,
hang it high
above my beloved's house,
so that she may look up
tonight
and see it,
and seeing it, sigh for me
as I sigh for her,
moon or no moon.”

“Walk with care in dark places, and do not put your faith in anyone who promises you the forgiveness of the Lord or a certain place in Paradise.”

Clive Barker book Mister B. Gone

Source: Mister B. Gone

“She was a sea: and I had to swim in her.”

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

“Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they’re feeling righteous.”

Clive Barker book Mister B. Gone

Source: Mister B. Gone

“O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.

Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.”

Clive Barker book The Thief of Always

Source: The Thief of Always

“Believe me, when I say;
There are no two powers
That command the soul.
One is God
The other is the tide.
-Anon
From the novel Abarat”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“Sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree

O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree,
But it was eaten by a newt,
And now I have no cuddly fruit,
O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree!”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“A soul of water a soul of stone.
A soul by name a soul unknown.
The hours unmake our flesh our bone.
The Soul is all and all alone!”

“She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

“Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him.
"Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her.
"It takes a man with real heart"
—he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest—
"to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Have patience; the lovers will suffer lovers always suffer.”

Clive Barker book Galilee

Source: Galilee

“Mischief nodded. 'It's true,' he conceded. 'You're in the company of eight world-class thieves,' he said, not without a little touch of pride. 'Saints we are not.'
But then,' said Deaux-Deaux, 'who is?' he thought on this. 'Besides saints.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: 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.”

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

“I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

“All things are true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live." - Peloquin”

“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 book Imajica

Source: Imajica

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

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Source: Weaveworld

“There’s no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn’t know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat.”

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

“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.”

“Perhaps sunlight had always been luminous, and doorways signs of greater passage than that of one room to another. But she’d not noticed it until now.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

“There are lives lived for love, and lives lived for art. We, happy band, have chosen the later persuasion.”

“She's… just a girl, you know. Like most girls: something and nothing.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

“Always, worlds within worlds.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Source: Weaveworld

“True joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.”

Part Five “Revels”, Chapter i “Cal, Among Miracles” (p. 199)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

“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.”

Part Eleven “The Dream Season”, Chapter ii “Representations”, Section 2 (p. 479)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER

“Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that: though as the narrator’s voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.
It must be arbitrary then, the place at which we chose to embark.
Somewhere between a past half forgotten and a future as yet only glimpsed.”

Part One “Wild Blue Yonder”, Chapter i “Homing”, Section 1 (p. 19; opening words)
(1987), BOOK ONE: IN THE KINGDOM OF THE CUCKOO

“He would be vigilant, but he would anticipate nothing, neither disaster nor revelation.
That was not to say he would give up looking to the future. True, he was just a Cuckoo: scared and weary and alone. But so, in the end were most of his tribe: it didn’t mean all was lost. As long as they could still be moved by a minor chord, or brought to a crisis of tears by scenes of lovers reunited; as long as there was room in their cautious hearts for games of chance, and laughter in the face of God, that must surely be enough to save them, at the last.
If not, there was no hope for any living thing.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Part Nine “Into the Gyre”, Chapter v “A Fragile Peace”, Section 3 (p. 440)
Weaveworld (1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

“By and large, horror fiction is the most difficult to domesticate because part of the point is that it's one step ahead – or behind – everybody else's taste. And I'm not really convinced I'd like it to change. There's something very healthy about horror fiction being always a little bit on the outside. It's the wild-dog genre.”

The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

“…Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you…
Old words; old rituals. But they still made sound commercial sense.
Talk of Power and Might would always attract an audience. Lords never went out of fashion.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Part Six “Back Among the Blind Men”, Chapter v “Our Lady of the Bones”, Section 2 (p. 273)
Weaveworld (1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

Similar authors

Andy Warhol photo

Andy Warhol133

American artist None

Hayao Miyazaki photo

Hayao Miyazaki34

Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka None

Barbra Streisand photo

Barbra Streisand5

American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and direct… None

Khalil Gibran photo

Khalil Gibran111

Lebanese artist, poet, and writer None

Pier Paolo Pasolini photo

Pier Paolo Pasolini3

Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual None

Bruce Lee photo

Bruce Lee193

Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and f… None

Sylvester Stallone photo

Sylvester Stallone8

American actor, screenwriter, and film director None

Salvador Dalí photo

Salvador Dalí117

Spanish artist None

Woody Allen photo

Woody Allen229

American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, p… None

Orson Welles photo

Orson Welles53

American actor, director, writer and producer None

Similar authors

Andy Warhol photo

Andy Warhol133

American artist None

Hayao Miyazaki photo

Hayao Miyazaki34

Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka None

Barbra Streisand photo

Barbra Streisand5

American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and direct… None

Khalil Gibran photo

Khalil Gibran111

Lebanese artist, poet, and writer None

Pier Paolo Pasolini photo

Pier Paolo Pasolini3

Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual None