Literature can do some wild things to one’s mind. The perfect combination of words and images can send tears streaming down your face or a shiver down your spine. In honor of this eerie Halloween season, we’ve scared up a few of the most chilling literary quotes from books we admire (and maybe fear a little too).
Whether it’s a creepy setting, a
disturbing character, or a potential real-life scary circumstance, some spooky
stories linger with you longer than you’d like. Remember to flick the night-light
on tonight because these popular lines from some of our favorite scary reads
were designed to haunt you. Don’t be surprised if they compel you to
pick up the books from which they came…
“Some people do the world a favor when they decide to leave it
early. It’s not necessarily my job or yours to stop that.”
―Nathan Ripley, Find You
in the Dark
“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my
belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could
stomp on it.”
–-Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw
Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed,
from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.”
—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
“There were times when John Wade wanted to open up Kathy’s
belly and crawl inside and stay there forever. He wanted to swim through her
blood and climb up and down her spine and drink from her ovaries and press his
guns against the firm red muscle of her heart.”
—Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
“I’m so young, and it’s all over.”
―Adam Higginbotham, Midnight
in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster
“And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much
horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring,
unrelenting sanity.”
―Stephen King, Pet
Sematary
“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back
when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”
―Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible
Monsters
This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.