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People with daddy issues can always spot a fellow traveler.
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Murder is an inherently evil act, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how convincing the rationalizations.
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The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume!
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Names have power. In certain cultures, just speaking a man's name gives you mastery over him.
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A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories.
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This was the west and we were westerners, and no bureaucrat in Washington was going to regulate what our companies did in our state. So, we gulped down hot smog and pretended like we enjoyed it because we were too fucking stupid to look out for our own best interests.
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I was reminded of the Winchester Mystery House, which I’d seen as a child on a trip with my parents. From above, there was the same sort of random conglomeration—peaked roofs connected to flat roofs, shakes and shingles, tarpaper and skylights—and I realized that Frank had constructed his house from the town, connecting the buildings until they made one enormous edifice. “Jesus,” I breathed.
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I always thought the appeal for vampires are the same as religion, the desire to avoid death and live forever.
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He could wait, because hatred is patient.
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His father’s punishments were driven by disappointment, partly in the boy, mostly in himself.
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An enigma? That's not a bad persona to have. I should probably shut up and let the mystery continue! It's good for my career.
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There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though - ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature - and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.
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If you ask me, people are unnecessarily gloomy about the end of the world.
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Life is short. Eternity is long.
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On the Today show, there was a story about a new poll that had been conducted regarding religious beliefs. A majority of Americans reported that they believed in angels, and a significant number thought they were personally protected by a guardian angel. He changed the channel to CNN, where they were covering a shooting at a North Carolina high school, a subject more comfortingly normal.
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Julian tried to keep a pleasant smile on his face, though already it felt strained. He was uncomfortable with people who used the word blessed as a part of their everyday speech. The implication was that God was intervening in the minutiae of their lives, hanging around and helping them with their jobs or children or household chores as though He had nothing better to do. Maybe it was true, Julian thought wryly. Maybe that was why there were wars and murders and earthquakes and hurricanes. God was too busy helping real estate agents find new listings to deal with those other issues.
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There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness.
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His shoulders slumped as though he were a human-shaped balloon that had just lost half of its air.
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We believe that the dead have power - May translated. The old man gestured toward the corner of his room, where framed black and white photos of an Asian man and woman stood between two sticks of incense in front of a red backdrop decorated with gold lettering.
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I write horror because I enjoy it. I'm endlessly fascinated by the supernatural, by death, by darkness. And, to be honest, I don't have much choice. This is the way my mind works.
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I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.
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Hope was a dangerous emotion that more often than not led men into foolishness and peril, made them risk their lives and lose their wives and part with fortunes that they never recovered.
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And in the background, behind everything he did or said or thought, like a low hum, was an unyielding sadness, an emotional blackness that threatened to bloom into depression should he pause to examine it.
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They lived in a Wikipedia world, where knowledge was no longer required and only the ability to access it mattered.