Clive Barker Quotations

Clive Barker is an English writer of fantasy and horror fiction, as well as a filmmaker. His novels include The Great and Secret Show, Weaveworld, and Imajica. His films include Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions.

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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)

Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever we're opened, we're red.
- Clive Barker's Books of Blood

Flesh is our indisputable commonality. Whatever our race, our religion, our politics we are faced every morning with the fact of our bodies. Their frailties, their demands, their desires. And yet the erotic appetites that spring from - and are expressed through - those bodies, are so often a source of bitter dissension and division. Acts that offer a glimpse of transcendence to one group are condemned by another. We are pressured from every side - by peers, by church, by state - to accept the consensual definition of taboo; though so often what excites our imaginations most is the violation of taboo.
- Introduction to "One Flesh" exibition, April 4-27, 1997

If we have nothing to do but service our own pleasure – because society has taught us that's all we're worth and we're exiled from positions of authority from which we could actually shape society – then we just become hedonists. Eventually, despite how great it may look on Saturday night, come Monday morning there's just purposelessness.
- The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.
- Gigaplex's interview, 1995

I've held a brain in my hands, which is an extraordinary experience.
- Gigaplex's interview, 1995

Memory, prophecy and fantasy
the past, the future and
the dreaming moment between
are all one country,
living one immortal day.

To know that is Wisdom.

To use it is the Art.
- The Great and Secret Show

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)

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

"The fact that Pinhead is a character that audiences want to watch, that women find sexy, that people have tattooed on their own bodies, I think, is perfectly extraordinary, and I'm incredibly pleased about it. I don't think an analysis of what he does in the movies ever completely illuminates the charm that the guy has.
- "A Living 'Hellraiser'", The Daily Bruin, Thursday, May 7, 1992

The monsters act out our rage. They act on their worst impulses, which is appealing to a certain part of us. They get punished for it, but we've enjoyed the spectacle of their liberation.
- The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

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

Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy.
- Gigaplex's interview, 1995

Your average game show host on TV, for instance, doesn't believe himself to be banal. He actually thinks that he's quite interesting. And if you look at the viewing figures, so do an enormous number of people in this country.
- American Heroes #174

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

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.
- Abarat, Book One

Life is short,
and pleasures few,
and holed the ship,
and drowned the crew,
But O! But O!
How very blue
the sea is!
- Abarat, Book One

Quotes about Barker

To call Clive Barker a 'horror novelist' would be like calling the Beatles a 'garage band'... He is the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also what delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful. These are words we can use to describe Clive Barker only until we invent new, more fitting adjectives.
- Quentin Tarantino

I think Clive Barker is so good that I am literally tongue-tied. He makes the rest of us look like we’ve been asleep for the past ten years.
- Stephen King

A powerful and fascinating writer with a brilliant imagination... an outstanding storyteller.
- J.G. Ballard

Nothing is off-limits to this free-range fabulist. He can fold a dusty Persian carpet into the contours of the world itself and wring delight from every lustrous thread.
- Armistead Maupin

Barker is one of the few writers who has altered an entire field: more than anyone since Lovecraft, he has changed the shape, the corporeality of horror.
- China Miéville

Clive Barker is Hell’s anatomist, and with scalpel brilliance dissects Hollywood, twisted gut to Heart of Darkness.
- Wes Craven

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