Gothic Literature Quotes

“Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?”
― Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

“would a madman have been so wise as this?”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

“I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy spirit, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of story-books and fairy-tales. Was n't it just a story-book over which I had fallen a-doze and a-dream?”
― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

“I knew that sound
well too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It
increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the
soldier into courage.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

“You see the world in colors,
I see in Black and Red.”
― Irum Zahra, Psychaotic: See The World In Red And Black

“Scar tissue does more than flaunt its strength by chronicling the assaults it has withstood. Scar tissue is new growth. And it is tougher than skin innocent of the blade.”
― Shelley Jackson

“I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Gloomy days, whether meteorological or psychological, lend themselves more to the creation of Gothic horror. On those insular days, the mind gravitates towards the unseen and the subconscious. Days of blinding sunshine banish the desire to ruminate and it is replaced with a longing to participate in the outside world.”
― Stewart Stafford

“That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have regained no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Sexual desire is only the frustrated desire to eat human flesh.”
― Christopher Frayling

“I made up my mind to take the life of the old
man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“He was wearing a purple cloak over his shoulders in a strange, foreign fashion, his arms folded inside it. His face was deathly pale, but as his great black eyes stared at me, a dagger seemed to pierce my heart. A feeling of horror ran through me, and quickly turning my face away, I summoned all my strength and continued speaking. But as though compelled by some magic force, I could not help looking over towards him again and again. He still stood there, impassive and motionless, his ghostly eyes fixed upon me. Something resembling bitter scorn and hatred lay on his high, furrowed brow and his drawn lips. The whole figure had a horrible, frightening air about it. It was... it was the mysterious painter from the Holy Linden.

Cruel, icy fingers clutched at my heart. A fearful sweat on my forehead; my phrases stuck in my throat, and my speech became more and more incoherent. But the terrible stranger still leant silently against the pillar, his glassy eyes set unwaveringly on me.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixirs

“Suddenly, in unconscious response to the steadiness of Nicholas' gaze, she raised her eyelids and looked full at him. A shock ran through her. Her heart beat in slow thick strokes. They looked across the room into each other's eyes for half a second only, then Nicholas', turning to the Countess, said smoothly: 'Ah, that is the most interesting, madame. Tell me more about your little blaise.' But Miranda knew that for all the triviality of the incident something cataclysmic had occurred. Their relationship had changed and from this point there could be no going back.”
― Anya Seton, Dragonwyck

“Touch the stone,' said Beliah, 'and you will touch" reality ", or what the ignorant of all ages think" reality "is. That kind of truth will kill you, man. You won't see morning! I have kept you all your life from such things as remorse, terror, pity. Touch the stone, and those same angels will change you into an old poor pathetic deluded dying creature. Hubert, a nurse has to shave you, your hand shakes so much. You know that don't you? You dribble at every orifice, Hubert. You've begun to smell this past year or two...' He suddenly howled as if I had actually touched the stone,'YOU WILL BE RAVAGED IN FIRES OF GRACE!'
I heard Nurse McGregor in the next ward. 'Good evening,' came her cheerful voice to the looney who had strangled his sweetheart and then buried her in his garden. 'Is it cocoa tonight, or tea, or milk? "
Beliah was weeping. Outside the eaves dripped. The whole earth was drenched with the grief of Beliah. He wept inside me. I felt his marvellous tears on my face.”
― George Mackay Brown, Scottish Ghost Stories

“The castle is situated at the terminus of a long and upward-winding mountain road. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the world, for there is little about it to suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities that might assure a wayfarer of welcome. Rather, this vast edifice of stone exudes an austerity, cold and repellent, a hint of ancient mysteries long buried, an effluvium of medieval dankness and decay. At night, and most particularly on nights when the moon is slim or cloud-enshrouded, it is a heavy blot upon the horizon, a shadow only, without feature save for its many-turreted outline; and should the moon be temporarily released from her cloudy confinement, her fugitive rays lend scant comfort, for they but serve to throw the castle into sudden, startling chiaroscuro, its windows fleetingly assuming the appearance of sightless though all-seeing orbs, its portcullis becoming for an instant a gaping mouth, its entire form striking the physical and the mental eye as would the sight of a giant skull.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“To be everywhere at once and to know everybody was, after all, but to slip the cables of the tiny, separate self, and experience the Whole. Hence the desire to be elsewhere and otherwise. Hence, too, the innate yearning to share experiences of all kinds with others.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Promise of Air

“My heart sank within me to behold that stately mansion in the midst of its expansive grounds — the park as beautiful now, in its wintry garb, as it could be in its summer glory; the majestic sweep, the undulating swell and fall, displayed to full advantage in that robe of dazzling purity, stainless and printless — save one long, winding track left by the trooping deer — the stately timber-trees with their heavy laden branches gleaming white against the full, grey sky; the deep, encircling woods; the broad expanse of water sleeping in frozen quiet; and the weeping ash and willow drooping their snowclad boughs above it — all presented a picture, striking, indeed, and pleasing to an unencumbered mind, but by no means encouraging to me.”
― Anne Brontë, Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“I greatly fear that she is of too super-sensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“I took a deep, deep breath and held it in my core; kept it close behind my protruding, fleshless ribs. I swallowed it whole. I was home.”
― Ava Bloomfield, Honest

“Even the Bible admitted that the world was full of mystery and beauty and golden perfumed luxury.”
― Anya Seton, Dragonwyck

“A Tropic flower cannot live without sun. A soul cannot live without love.”
― Anya Seton, Dragonwyck

“Never fear, protecting my womb from Gothic novels is my first priority.”
― Shannon Hale, Midnight in Austenland

“I'd not be shocked if bad water was the source of all the moody Gothic Lit classics. With a few cases of hookworm to add some Southern spunk.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“you ought not to consider poverty a crime.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“he night beyond the window was still, mordant white snow, punctuated only by the eerie dark of the trees, gumshoeing their way along the edge of the path outside. Their skeletal fingers clawed up at the stars, held down by an insidious, weightless lacing of snowflakes. I gazed idly at the moon and wondered if it truly had the power to sway the will of men.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“The night beyond the window was still, mordant white snow, punctuated only by the eerie dark of the trees, gumshoeing their way along the edge of the path outside. Their skeletal fingers clawed up at the stars, held down by an insidious, weightless lacing of snowflakes. I gazed idly at the moon and wondered if it truly had the power to sway the will of men.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“Si asesinar es tu única virtud, entonces es una maldición.”
― Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, Inferno: Una historia de vampiros

“It's almost amusing, in a dark and twisted way, how I've spent my whole life tip-toeing around sharp edges - forever trying to outfox fate just to survive. Now, as if life has come full circle, I find myself intentionally steering into the eye of the storm.”
― Lilith Fury, In the darkness we share

“The darkness and the night made her see monsters where there were only shadows, screams where a creaking door opened, whispers where the wind swayed.”
― Aran Maza, Garden Of Shadows

“Loneliness is like curfew, in the bird's cage.”
― Akshat Pathak