I’ve just recently picked up the habit of writing down interesting quotes from books that I read.  Yeah, you guys who’ve done it all your life, stop looking so aghast   I thought I would share some of them here.

“A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.” — Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”

“The Cask of Amontillado” is one of Poe’s most well-known stories themed around revenge.

“Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.” — Paul Tillich

I found this as a sidebar in “The Creative Way” by Julia Cameron, which I have not yet finished. I will be going back to this book quite often.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” — H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it’s contents.” — H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

H. P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite horror authors.  These two quotes by him are probably two of the biggest reasons why.  He’s correct that ‘fear’ is the oldest and strongest emotion as well as the idea of people being even more fearful if they do not know what is coming next.  Lovecraft uses this with his Great Old Ones and, in his stories, when his characters see the monsters, they are struck insane.  I also think that fear of the unknown can extend into the future.  A parent’s fear of a child dying from an illness, the fear of change and what that change is going to do… Deep down, in your core being, that kind of fear exists.

“As a writer, your job is not merely to write; your job is to get people to care about what you write.” — Christina Katz

I also found this in Cameron’s book, but it’s very fitting to all types of fiction.  The only reason for people to read your creations is if they care about the characters and the plot in them.

“How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nerve filament, a slight congestion, a small disturbance of our living-machinery may turn the most light-hearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest!” — Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”

“In that case I was a somnambulist; I lived without knowing it, that mysterious double life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable or invisible being does not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor, animate our captive body, which obeys this other being, as it obeys us, and more than it obeys ourselves.” — Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”

“Certainly, solitude is dangerous for active minds. We require around us men who can think and talk. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with phantoms.” — Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”

Guy de Maupassant wrote “The Necklace,” which is probably required reading in most English short story classes.  I was lucky enough to read it as a child and it remains one of my favorite short stories.  “The Horla” was a story in a collection of short stories chosen by H. P. Lovecraft in his essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

“I said, ‘I think they might also be what are called ‘hopeful monsters’.’

She said, “What are hopeful monsters?”

I said, ‘They are things born slightly before their time; when its not quite known if the environment is quite ready for them.’

… I thought I might say – But hopeful monsters, don’t you know, nearly always die young.” — Nicholas Mosely, “Hopeful Monsters”

“I thought – Perhaps it was because it was unrepeatable, that the time in Berlin was so good.” — Nicholas Mosely, “Hopeful Monsters”

“Science takes us to the limit of what we can know about objects: beyond science, there is nothing. But this nothing is postulated by science, for how can science be aware of itself except from a standpoint of what is beyond it? Facing this nothing, we experience dread: but we also experience rapture because it is what gives us a sense of our own freedom from the tyranny of things. It also gives us the possibility of being in a knowing relation to things. Without this nothing, we would ourselves be just things.” — Heidegger, Nicholas Mosely, “Hopeful Monsters”

Strangely enough,I was reading this book right before I received my copy of “Under the Dome” by Stephen King and I have had a hard time putting it down.  Yes, I did put it down, but once I read the 1000+ pages of King’s newest work, it will be the first book I pick up to finish.  It took a bit to become involved in and the author’s style is different from what I have read in the past but I’m really enjoying it.

“An old Ukranian proverb warns ‘A tale that begins with a beat will end with the devil.’ That is a risk we will have to take.” — Tom Robbins, “Jitterbug Perfume”

My friend (and creative guidance person), Michelle Townsend, will probably shoot me when she sees that this is as far as I have gotten in this book.  But I’ll tell you, this is enough to make me want to read the rest of it.

I do want to continue this eclectic reading list   I’m going to create another page and list the books I will be reading as well as the reviews I write of them as I do so.  I have hundreds of books in my house as well as my garage and not to mention what I have electronically.  I need to read what I have – and maybe intersperse them with a new book here and there.

Related posts:

1. Quotes: Literary Horror? Is there such a thing?
2. My genre past, present and future
3. ACK! Stephen King’s Newest Book “Under the Dome” is Out!
4. Links: Interview and a Short Story “I.D.” by Joyce Carol Oates
5. All-Out-Worldwide-Zombie-Blog-Explosion 2010! CONTEST and Review of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls” by Steve Hockensmith

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