Top 100 Dark Fiction Quotes
#2. I've always loved what I'd term 'dark fiction' writers, everyone from J. G. Ballard to Mervyn Peake and Philip Pullman. I'm not sure it's a genre, but it's what I like best.
Christopher Fowler
#3. I use Fiction to face Reality And write dark Stories in hope to brighten my Path.
A. Mani
#5. We were just us, broken and bruised, fucked-up and messy, and together we were everything we never thought we could be.
T.M. Frazier
#6. In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.
Nikki Grimes
#7. People are slippery.
Especially when they excrete.
Or bleed.
Or fuck.
Logan Ryan Smith
#8. Don't make rash decisions while the world is dark. Wait for the light to make all things clear.
Bryan Davis
#9. In the lonely dark she goes again and again to that locked cupboard knowing that she holds the key, and frightened of the self she might find inside.
Frederick Anderson
#10. This was not simply cold: this was science fiction. This was a story set on the dark side of Mercury, back when they thought Mercury had a dark side. This was somewhere out on rocky Pluto, where the sun is just another star, shining only a little more brightly in the darkness.
Neil Gaiman
#11. These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady's things - hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell.
Gwenn Wright
#12. Jane sneezed three hundred dollars' worth of coke into the air.
Krishna's black eyes seem to have mirrors in them. She glances at me with a smile as big as the Cheshire Cat's.
Anthea Carson
#13. I told you. I've been watching." She twirled, her arms outstretched. "Watching, watching, watching.
A.F. Stewart
#14. Alan shrugged. "I love the CBC, really, but being voted its president - " "Co-president," Sputnik corrected. " - is kind of like being declared King of Nerds." "Co-king," Sputnik asserted.
J.M. Richards
#15. ["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.
Arthur C. Clarke
#16. Dirck closed his eyes and tried not to laugh. Win, the dauntless rebel who'd dodged lasoclear blasts without a flinch and thought nothing of invading highly classified government records with treasonous intent, was afraid of the dark.
Marcha A. Fox
#18. The deeds of the light do just as much damage as the deeds of the dark.
From Lucifer's Ladder (God of the Fallen: Book One)
W.D. Frank
#19. There are many dark corners in the many universes. Don't continue on if you are afraid to explore the dark, brutal and absurd
David Agranoff
#20. The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.
John Steinbeck
#21. Yes I am dark, but my eyes are full of stars.
Bella James
#22. Sow a thought and reap an action, sow an action and reap a habit, sow a habit and reap a destiny - John Cleaver
Dan Wells
#23. So why had he come? He'd said he'd had no choice, but for centuries men had chopped off their own limbs, faked insanity, gone into hiding or to prison rather than to war. Was there some dark flaw in his psyche? Did he have some perverse need to destroy? To kill?
Dominique Wilson
#24. This girl, this impossibly sweet girl, was his present and his future, despite his past. Fate had to be smiling at him. He couldn't imagine life without this dark haired beauty. Those beautiful hazel eyes reached into his heart and took hold.
Shayna Varadeaux
#25. Far, far away something made a single ghostly howl, like a banshee in the dark.
Lucy Christopher
#26. Good fiction can both entertain and light up those dark corners where nice people don't want to go.
Greg Rucka
#27. He thrust into me as if he were trying to climb into my soul.
T.M. Frazier
#28. Is that your cheap way of telling me you want to kiss me?"
He looks into my eyes, his dark gaze capturing mine. "Querida, I always want to kiss you.
Simone Elkeles
#29. For elves, sex was two souls finding each other in the dark.
Ash Gray
#30. Tej seemed such a sunny personality, much of the time
these flashes of dark were like a crack in the sky, shocking and wrong. Reminding him that the daylight was the illusion, the scattering of light by the atmosphere, and the endless night was the permanent default behind it all.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#31. She was lucky if he stood behind her. Not so lucky if he came to crush her. And a woman might only learn the truth of it - when he walked out of her life.
Highlighted by 9 Kindle users
Lenore Wolfe
#32. The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously.
Richard P. Denney
#33. I'm an optimist. My own fiction, while it has its own dark warnings about pitfalls ahead, depicts the potential of science to improve society by networking human minds.
Ramez Naam
#34. People won't change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain changing brings.
Just B. Jordan
#35. From The Spiral Dance to Dreaming the Dark to Truth or Dare, Starhawk has led us to places of risk and guided us to think in a new way, a womanly order. Now, in fiction, with the aid of her characters, she will save the earth and all the sacred things that dwell therein.
E. M. Broner
#37. We walk in dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no one may pass. We live for the One. We die for the One.
the Ranger oath
J. Michael Straczynski
#38. I didn't want to be the woman who gave herself over willingly to the first man to notice her. I didn't want to be the stupid girl in every novel who loved without question and entered relationships that didn't make sense.
Destinee Hardwick
#39. I wrapped my arms around my body, pushing away my doubts and indecision for just a moment, and looked out toward the cemetery. "Whatever it takes," I vowed. And as I said the words, I felt a chill run across my neck and a ghostly touch slide down my cheek
Catrina Burgess
#40. Without the journey and crucial moment of understanding, I would still be questioning everything before me. I know now that I must trust what comes next, for there is a plan greater than the one I can see at work.
Brynn Myers
#41. Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.
Douglas Lain
#42. You know what's worse than being a sick son-of-a-bitch? Knowing you're a sick son-of-a-bitch.
T.M. Frazier
#43. Her eyes were a rich dark brown that were so deep, they reminded me of my sleepless nights, awake, staring into complete darkness. I felt compelled to look deeper, searching for something inside her, but her soul was covered and her eyes would not show me.
Cristina Martin
#44. White froth bubbles from the mouth of Chow Sze Teck. The airconditioner is still running and the room is dark. Slumped over the mahogany desk in his study, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Housing is, as always, immaculately dressed.
Wong Souk Yee
#45. Why, oh why was I standing entranced when I should have been releasing my inner she wolf on his arse?
Lilly James
#47. The pity in Matt's eyes was almost too much to bear but she found herself unable to turn away. She had only seen that look once and that was when he almost lost Nichole. The sparkle in his eye burned out as if it was nothing more than a dying ember leaving his brown eyes dark and cold. Like Scott's.
Julia Barkey
#48. What came to me later in those dark, dreaming hours put paid to that though and as always my mind led me treacherously back to the bleak and inescapable truth.
There was no cure for what one had seen or done.
Hannah Blatchford
#49. I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.
Lauren DeStefano
#50. I remember the lights turning into blurs of blazing fire. I remember the air-conditioning chilling my arms. The smell of coffee smudging into the smell of eucalyptus.
Lucy Christopher
#51. The tall monk who came striding down the shadowed monastery corridor was surprisingly young, barely thirty. As he swept past the novices, his dark robe flapping wildly around his legs, they bobbed their heads in fearful deference.
Michelle Frost
#53. Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.
Elizabeth McCracken
#55. A friendship like theirs was hard to come by, and when such a thing is found, it is often even harder to hold on to.
But, as so few come to learn, absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.
Ross Turner
#56. Never run upstairs when someone's chasing you. Don't try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent.
Mark Zero
#57. I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#58. I can see the cracks in society, in people, in this world and I'd rather die before slipping into one of them.
Shayne Colaco
#59. And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.
Benjamin Kane Ethridge
#60. In certain fiction, she perceives truths that she rarely finds in nonfiction; therefore, in her quest to better understand the world and the meaning of her life, she reads those novels that suggest a world of wonders, dark and light, forever unfolding for eyes willing to see.
Dean Koontz
#61. My mama always said, You can always ask. The worst they can do is say no. But I don't think Mama was thinking about revenge and murder when she dealt out that piece of homespun advice
Catrina Burgess
#62. For the first time in a long time a bit of something I was unfamiliar with crept up inside me.
If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought it was hope.
T.M. Frazier
#63. I want to do science fiction with dark stories.
Kim Ji-woon
#64. Ty?" I said, trying out your name, liking the way it sounded. "So what's it like anyway? Australia?"
You smiled then, and your whole face changed with it. It kind of lit up, like there were sunbeams coming from inside you.
"You'll find out," you said.
Lucy Christopher
#65. I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
Joanna Scott
#66. Nothing is 'wrong' with me, Dan. What's wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.
Martin Hopkins
#67. Hope had only revealed herself to him when he was immersed in darkness
Soroosh Shahrivar
#68. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?
David Foster Wallace
#69. Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.
Carla H. Krueger
#70. From the dark forest that bordered the soft ploughed fields, came a low cry that did not belong to any animal. It was accompanied by the sound of branches bending and snapping, and the splintering of wood as trees were crushed or toppled onto their sides.
Peter James West
#72. If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better.
Alexandar Tomov
#73. Life, like that water droplet, is everlasting and imperishable. There is only a transition, never an end !
Rajib Mukherjee
#74. When the world uncovers some dark disguise,
Embrace the darkness with averted eyes.
Thomas Ligotti
#75. If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may describe the color of their skin - black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark skin, etc. But I'm not talking about race.
Jamaica Kincaid
#76. Nothing is whole, not for too damned long. The world is half night.
Peter Straub
#78. I didn't want the person standing there, beside the bed, to have the same face I'd found so attractive at the airport. But you were there all right: the blue eyes, blondish hair, and tiny scar. Only you didn't look beautiful this time. Just evil.
Lucy Christopher
#79. I've committed to nothing ... and that's just suicide ... by tiny, tiny increments.
Nick Hornby
#80. Famine was a dirty bitch with rotten fangs, but the hunger she put in a belly bit sharp nonetheless.
T. Frohock
#81. Don't worry about paying me. Stay alive, child. You must save yourself. And, whatever you do, don't forget who you are
Catrina Burgess
#82. We are all a little damaged, Bee. Some of us more than others.
T.M. Frazier
#83. The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.
Chuck Palahniuk
#84. Sick, twisted Abby was in love with the sick, twisted, beautiful Jake.
T.M. Frazier
#85. Why do you want to touch me? I'm nothing. I'm no one.
T.M. Frazier
#86. My name is one best whispered in terror in a dark corner.
Andrew Cormier
#87. The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages.
Dana Schutz
#88. I see you have returned, my love; and your mood is as dark as ever. Did your soldiers not adore you to your complete satisfaction?
Wayne Gerard Trotman
#89. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]
David Foster Wallace
#90. They really do occupy a scrumptious little dark corner of my heart!
Geoffrey Wood
#91. Drifting on the black, rippling surface were fingers. Thumbs. Dozens of them. Hundreds, floating like dead fish in a dynamited pond. I saw part of an ear. The lights went out.
Glen Hirshberg
#93. The Captain, so close as he was, didn't warrant their attention. Even a fly on a horse's hindquarters gets a tail whip. And that is the thick of it. We are less than flies to these foul foes.
Greever Williams
#94. The city was a machine of its own, continuously producing. We were constantly pumped out through its assembly line, in different forms or models. We came hardwired with different stories, dark secrets, vices, and defects. Over time, we fail and come to find our end, but the city continues onwards.
Cristina Martin
#95. Metaphorically, Tom said, if you take knowledge as light, and ignorance as dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark
to ignorance. Something more tactile and muscley than just lack of knowledge. A sort of will to ignorance. It would explain some politicians.
Elizabeth Moon
#96. But what the hell, I thought as I lay there in the dark. It could be souls rot away with the body, too. What did anything matter in the long run anyway, except memories? And they only lived on in corpses that couldn't talk.
Will Viharo
#97. St John from the book of The Revelation
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark.
Joseph M. Chiron
#98. You killed me." My voice was unsteady.
He held me close again. "I brought you back."
"Please tell me we only have to do that once."
He whispered against my ear, "I swear I won't kill you again. Cross my heart and hope to die." It was a bad joke
Catrina Burgess
#99. ...but at night when he turns the awkward [telescope] skyward, he catches his breath at the clarity of the image and the vast populations of stars unknown to him until then, the riotous glittering in the dark crevices between constellations, a convocation of bright spirits waiting to be found.
John Pipkin
#100. All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you.
Jaye Frances
