“optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“Subsequently there ensues an epoch of complex, proliferating intrigues and conspiracies among the ranks of double agents, whose agendas become so densely intertwined that they are virtually indistinguishable. Ever the Governing Executives of OneiriCon, many of whom are defectors from the Nightmare Network, throw themselves into the depths of the new order and lose all sense of identity in the… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
“The point that in the absence of birth nobody exists who can be deprived of happiness is terribly conspicuous. For optimists, this fact plays… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“The worst fear of the race yes, the world suddenly transformed into a senseless nightmare, horrible dissolution of things. Nothing compares, even oblivion is a sweet dream. You understand why, of course. Why this peculiar threat. These brooding psyches, all the busy minds everywhere. I hear them buzzing like flies in the blackness. I see them as glow worms flitting… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
“In supernatural horror stories, however, magical thinking is a completely different matter. Those characters contending with what seems to be the work of magic will deny till the very last moment that anything magical is going on. They will invoke reason and evidence and eek out corroborations for the cause of their problems. But readers of these stories are rarely,… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
“When you are alone in the wilderness, opinions or beliefs of any kind are dropped as the absurd accoutrements they are. But after being in the wilderness for a while, you may come around to feeling sociable. Maybe you could try living in a community of “like-minded” social deviants. However, they had better be so alike that they are clones… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
Nature proceeds by blunders; that is its way. It is also ours. So if we have blundered by regarding consciousness as a blunder, why make a fuss over it? Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. What do we have to lose? No evil would attend our… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
We live in a permanent state of bad faith, a mutual representation of ourselves to one another for the sake of remaining sane and… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“The darkness of the grotesque is an immortal enigma: in all legends of the dead, in all the tales of creatures of the night,… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about everywhere. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share Image
“As I drifted along with my bodiless invisibility, I felt myself more and more becoming an empty, floating shape, seeing without being seen and walking without the interference of those grosser creatures who shared my world. It was not an experience completely without interest or even pleasure. The clown's shibboleth of "here we are again" took on a new meaning… — Thomas Ligotti Copy Share
