The Terror Quotes
Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.
Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse? Can you answer me that, Mr. Hickey?.
Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [...]
I did not know what to say to this.
Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind.
Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why.
He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting.
He enjoyed the soft sound of night wind and the knowledge that he was the only boy — perhaps the only human being — out there in the dark on the windy, frozen-grass meadows on this night that smelled of coming snow, alienated from the lighted windows and the warm hearths, very aware that he was of the village but not part of it at that moment. It was a thrilling, almost erotic feeling — an illicit discovery of self separated from everyone and everything else in the cold and dark.