Supernatural Quotes

“But a smell shivered him awake.
It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.
The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.
The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.
A shadow moved.
It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow...”
― Stephen M. Irwin, The Dead Path

“It was at the outskirts of the world that the Old Things accumulated, like driftwood round the edges of the sea. ("The Troll")”
― T.H. White, Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome

“Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls 'the fantastic,' between 'the marvelous' and 'the uncanny.' According to Todorov, 'The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.' Once the event is satisfactorily explained (and sometimes it is never explained), we have left the fantastic for an adjacent genre - either 'the uncanny,' where the apparently supernatural is revealed as illusory, or 'the marvelous,' where the laws of ordinary reality must be revised to incorporate the supernatural. As long as uncertainty reigns, however, we are in the ambiguous realm of the fantastic.”
― Howard Kerr, The Haunted dusk: American supernatural fiction, 1820-1920

“He did not himself believe in the supernatural, but the thing happened, and he proposed to tell it as simply as possible. It was stupid of him to say that it shook his faith in mundane affairs, for it was just as mundane as anything else. Indeed the really frightening part about it was the horribly tangible atmosphere in which it took place. None of the outlines wavered in the least. The creature would have been less remarkable if it had been less natural. It seemed to overcome the usual laws without being immune to them. ("The Troll")”
― T.H. White, Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome

“We're all Hitler inside. We're all Christ inside. I'm not keen on the idea, but it's true, isn't it? We've all got a little bit of the devil in us.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“A piercing screech from above caught my attention. However, it was the arm landing beside me with teeth marks that let me know what was going on.
“Can you be a little more careful where you let body parts fall?”
- Faith, Witch Devotions”
― Elizabeth J. Kolodziej

“Here's how I'll tell you what I think—if you see white smoke then you know I picked a new pope. And if I'm drinking a Snapple then you know I don't give a shit.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister.”
― Jason Jack Miller, HELLBENDER

“But I find it necessary to repeat in this particular place that the division into classes, which is so salient a part of modern demonology, had, and has, little significance for primitive man or for the peasant in a comparatively low state of mental development. To such people, spirits of all kinds - fairies, the ghosts of the dead, and even witches and water-kelpies - are all creatures of the supernatural class between which he scarcely differentiates.”
― Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins

“In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.

Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural encounter in fiction seems to reflect some deeper disorientations in the culture at large.”
― Howard Kerr, The Haunted dusk: American supernatural fiction, 1820-1920

“This is what people were looking at all day? How embarrassing! I looked like Quasimodo! My guests were exceptional actors.”
― Cameo Renae, In My Dreams

“The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.”
― Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien

“Many of the best fantastic stories begin in a leisurely way, set in commonplace surroundings, with exact, meticulous descriptions of an ordinary background, much as in a 'realistic' tale. Then a gradual - or it may be sometimes a shockingly abrupt - change becomes apparent, and the reader begins to realize that what is being described is alien to the world he is accustomed to, that something strange has crept or leapt into it. This strangeness changes the world permanently and fundamentally.”
― Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien

“Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.”
― Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien

“All souls can earn IMMORTALITY.
The Creators have IMMORTALITY.
The Creators are the' ONLY' ONES'
To award IMMORTALITY...

FROM MY BOOK: War between Souls over First Universe Justice Awaits”
― Tiffany Thompson

“You are not a handgun. More like a pellet gun. Maybe even a slingshot.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“It's Coke, my man. You really think I'm going to let you pour any more alcohol into your body tonight?”
― Jason Jack Miller, HELLBENDER

“And the kids?"
"Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn's rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he's..." She looked at Nicholas. "He's like you. Gifted, but ignorant."
Nicholas bristled, "I'm not ignorant."
"You are about magic."
"That's because I don't believe in magic."
"Nicholas," She stopped, hands on hips, waiting until he turned around. "You're haunted. You see the dead. How can you not believe in magic?”
― Stephen M. Irwin, The Dead Path

“But the recurrent ambiguity of the American tale of the supernatural reveals both a fascination with the possibility of numinous experience and a perplexity about whether there was, in fact, anything numinous to be experienced. Writers often delighted in leading readers into, but not out of, the haunted dusk of the borderland.”
― Howard Kerr, The Haunted dusk: American supernatural fiction, 1820-1920

“(Washington) Irving was only the first of the writers of the American ghostly tale to recognize that the supernatural, exactly because its epistemological status is so difficult to determine, challenged the writer to invent a commensurately sophisticated narrative technique.”
― Howard Kerr, The Haunted dusk: American supernatural fiction, 1820-1920

“They were pleased to eat more Nazis, although nervous about too many disappearances being noticed. More troubling, however, was the flavor. Nazis were nearly indigestible. The taste of hate was hard to swallow.”
― Sarah Jane Stratford

“Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through, Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through. He'd lay in bed 'til the morning came, but the devil'd visit him just the same. Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“I'm sure you have drawers overflowing with panties the ladies throw at the stage. We saw you guys play down at Mon Brewing a few times. Way to keep the Nineties alive.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“Music lets you write your own checks. Don't ever forget that.”
― Jason Jack Miller, The Devil and Preston Black

“Henry,that's how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them.”
― Jason Jack Miller, HELLBENDER

“Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He'd sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she'd found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.”
― Stephen M. Irwin

“When Carri died, I felt like I had lost everything, except my life, and my memories of her. Now I can’t even dream of her...”
― Richard Finney, DEMON DAYS - Angel of Light

“Oh God,” Jenna said, “will you shut up and kiss me before I change my mind?”
― Richard Finney, DEMON DAYS - Angel of Light

“Yeah, but a hellbender never dies. You ever see a dead one?”
― Jason Jack Miller

“Anyone who has experienced a strange episode in their life that defies all present scientific knowledge can appreciate the limits of human knowledge. There's nothing like such an event to make you keenly aware of how little we truly know and understand.”
― Steven Symes