Bram Stoker

Abraham Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best remembered as the author of the influential horror novel Dracula; he wrote under the name Bram Stoker.

Dracula (1897)

• I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
  Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
  "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"
  • Jonathan Harker's journal

• I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.
  • Dracula to Jonathan Harker

• We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.
  • Dracula to Jonathan Harker

• Listen to them - children of the night. What music they make.
  • Dracula referring to the howling of the wolves to Jonathan Harker.

• No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
  • Jonathan Harker

• Despair has its own calms.
  • Jonathan Harker

• Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!
  • Professor Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

• Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play.
  • Professor Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

• You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera.
  • Professor Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

• I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.
  • The Keeper in the Zoological Gardens

• The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.
  • Mina Harker

• Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured.
  • Jonathan Harker

Dracula's Guest (1914)

• Go home, Johann — Walpurgis nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.
  • Jonathan Harker

• THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST
  • Inscription found on the tomb of Countess Dolingen of Gratz by Jonathan Harker

• Be careful of my guest — his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.
  • Telegram to Bistritz from Count Dracula.