Clive Barker Quotes (32 Quotes)

A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.

Fuck Heaven. I haven't gotten Earth sorted out yet.

His body and his mind went about their different businesses. The former, freed from conscious instruction, breathed, rolled, sweated, and digested. The latter went dreaming.

I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.

Perhaps sunlight had always been luminous, and doorways signs of greater passage than that of one room to another. But she'd not noticed it until now.

Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing.

We're too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.

I've always thought that the most extraordinary special effect you could do is to buy a child at the moment of its birth, sit it on a little chair and say, You'll have three score years and ten, and take a photograph every minute.

As for Clive Barker -- he spent virtually all day with his fans. First at an autograph session that went on far longer than it was scheduled to for the simple reason that the accomplished horror master took the time to converse with each and every fan like he was visiting with an old friend. Having interviewed Barker on a number of occasions I can attest to his warmth as an interview subject. On one occasion my cameraman was late due to traffic so Barker suggested we head down to the bar in the downtown Hilton Hotel for a drink where he proceeded to sign a copy of one of his books for me, not just sign it, but sketch an original piece of his unique artwork on the blank reverse side of the title page. Today he was cheerful and happy to be among his fans and readers. I do love these events, ... It is a chance to interact in a direct and personal way. So when I do agree to attend such an event, I wholeheartedly throw myself headlong into it.

On the crassest level, the lady gets into the box, the lady is sawn in half, the lady is in two pieces, the box is put back together again and the lady is whole. The magician, the shaman figure, the worker of miracles divides and subdivides himself and his assistants. He's drowned, is bound, is filled with swords, and comes out whole.

The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.

You can plan to be brave - it's even better if you just try to be brave.

'And we'll watch and photograph you for ten years after you die, then we'll run the film.' Wouldn't that be extraordinary We'd watch this thing get bigger and bigger, and flower to become extraordinary and beautiful, then watch it crumble, decay rot.

To you who have never died, may I say Welcome to the world.

You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.

My imagination is my polestar; I steer by that.

I've never worked where it was hard to be gay. Besides, being gay is a spectacular irrelevance to getting on with your life.

Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.

There was time for all their miracles now. For ghosts and transformations for passion and ambiguity for noon-day visions and midnight glory. Time in abundance. For nothing ever begins. And this story, having no beginning, will have no end.

Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.

Gather experience... Look at what you should not look at. A feeling of anxiety is the sure and certain evidence that you should do this.

I'm a great dog fanatic. My own dog died a little while ago and I take it very personally when things die - it's a major offence.

Whale was gay, I'm gay Whale was English, I'm English. Whale made some horror movies, and I've made some horror movies. It seemed as if I should be helping to tell this story.

Here is a list of fearful thingsThe 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.

I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else - but I'm absolutely nothing special.

It's irritating, because I would like to make movies that were as unrelenting and as explicit in their metaphysical, sexual and violent imagery as the stories. But with the way censorship is at present, there's no way you can do that.

The loss only shows how far backwards we have gone in Africa, ... But all we can do now is to roll back our sleeves and make changes and look forward to the future.

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.

What I tried to do is deliver movies that have worked for me more than once.

It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

Before all that, however, Barker was the founder of and a director with a small theater troupe in London. The troupe staged Frankenstein in Love ... The History of the Devil.