Fear and horror - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

I am acutely conscious of the nearness of some mystery, of some overwhelming Presence. The very air seems pregnant with terror. I sit huddled, and just listen, intently. Still, there is no sound. Nature, herself, seems dead. Then, the oppressive stillness is broken by a little eldritch scream of wind, that sweeps round the house, and dies away, remotely.

- William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland (1908)

They, like the subject and material, belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Call of Cthulhu'' (1928)

Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man's power to bear?

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Call of Cthulhu'' (1928)

It is not so much the things we know that terrify us as it is the things we do not know, the things that break all known laws and rules, the things that come upon us unaware and shatter the pleasant dream of our little world.

- Donald A.Wandrei, ''Something from Above'' (1930)

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Shunned House'' (1937)

There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those nuclei of all dreamable hideousness which the cosmos saves to blast an accursed and unhappy few.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Shunned House'' (1937)

I seemed able to look behind the mask which every person wears and which is so characteristically pronounced in a congested city, and see what lay behind - the egotistical sensitivity, the smouldering irritation, the thwarted longing, the defeat . . . and, above all, the anxiety, too ill-defined and lacking in definite object to be called fear but nonetheless infecting every thought and action, and making trivial things terrible. And it seemed to me that social, economic, or physiological factors, even Death and theWar, were insufficient to explain such anxiety, and that it was in reality an upwelling from something dubious and horrible in the very constitution of the universe.

- Fritz Leiber, ''The Dreams of Albert Moreland'' (1945)

The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear.

- Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (1953)

The spider was immortal. It was more than a spider. It was every unknown terror in the world fused into wriggling, poison-jawed horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form.

- Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man (1956)

The most frightening thing in this world is discovering the abnormal in that which is closest to us.

- Kobo Abй, Inter Ice Age 4 (1959), translated by E. Dale Saunders (1970)

However selective the conscious mind may be, most biological memories are unpleasant ones, echoes of danger and terror. Nothing endures for so long as fear.

- J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

How absolutely typical of your species - you don't understand something so you become fearful.

- Paul Schneider, ''The Squire of Gothos,'' episode of Star Trek (1967)

Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

What one fears is alien.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Vaster Than Empires and More Slow'' (1971)

There was horror in the earth and in the thick air, an enormity of horror. This place was fear, was fear itself; and he was in it, and there were no paths.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore (1972)

Only the unimaginative, of whom you are the king, have no fear.

- Philip Josй Farmer, ''Stations of the Nightmare - Part One'' (1974)

Man is most human at his most frightened.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Schrцdinger's Cat'' (1974)

The countries of love and terror border each other here and there.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''The Children's Crusade'' (1974)

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [. . .] has the words ''don't panic'' inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover.

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the First,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1978)

The sign changed itself again. It said: do not be alarmed. After a pause, it added: be very, very frightened.

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

- Charles Edward Pogue and David Cronenberg, The Fly (film, 1986)

The trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine.

- Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic (1986)

Lanette told her scary stuff because it was fun to be scared when you knew you were pretty safe.

- William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

- J. M. Barrie, The LittleWhite Bird, or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens (1902)

Wendy: How lovely to fly! Peter: I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back and then away we go. Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me, saying funny things to the stars.

- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (play, 1904)

I pulled the covers up tight under my chin and whispered to myself, ''I can so fly,'' and sighed heavily. Just another fun-stuff that grown-ups didn't allow, like having cake for breakfast or driving the tractor or borrowing the cow for an Indian pony on a warpath.

- Zenna Henderson, ''Gilead'' (1954)

''Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be up there in the middle of the storm with clouds under your feet and over your head and lightning lacing around you like hot golden rivers?'' Dad rattled his paper. ''Sounds uncomfortable,'' he said. But I sat there and hugged the words to me in wonder. I knew! I remembered! '' 'And the rain like icy silver hair lashing across your lifted face.' '' I recited as though it were a loved lesson.

- Zenna Henderson, ''Gilead'' (1954)

''Someday - '' He broke off. ''I think every living thing will fly or anyhow trudge or run; some will go fast, like they do in this life, but most will fly or trudge. Up and up. Forever. Even slugs and snails; they'll go very slow but they'll make it sometime. All of them will make it eventually, no matter how slow they go. Leaving a lot behind; that has to be done.''

- Philip K. Dick, Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)

I see myself streaking across the sky like a star to leave the earth forever. What holds me back?

- William S. Burroughs, TheWild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971)

Nobody burns so as when sunning himself on a cloud.

- R. A. Lafferty, ''Sky'' (1971)

''There is an art to flying,'' said Ford, ''or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.''

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982)

Therru went, not crouching and sidling now but running freely, flying, Tenar thought, seeing her vanish in the evening light beyond the dark doorframe, flying like a bird, a dragon, a child, free.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)