Halloween Quotes

Tis the night—the night Of the grave's delight, And the warlocks are at their play; Ye think that without, The wild winds shout, But no, it is they—it is they!

I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.

I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

For some of us, Halloween is everyday.

Every Halloween I missed being a kid, getting to dress up and eat tons of candy. The only thing I got to do now was…eat tones of Candy. Not half bad

I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.

No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night come floating in on the tide, bumping up against the rocks and rolling up on the beaches; it must be Halloween in the sea

Apparently, this really was Kill Charley Davidson Week. Or at least Horribly Maim Her.... It would probably never get government recognition, though, destined to be underappreciated like Halloween or Thesaurus Day.

I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm sure I'll hold out until Halloween." "That's already passed." "Exactly," I muttered

The farther we've gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we've come to need Halloween. October Dreams: A celebration of Halloween

It was so close to October that Halloween was knocking at his heart.

October proved a riot a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween.

Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.

But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. Because there are somethings you can't go through in life and become friends, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

This ain't Halloween." he said. "What's that mean?" "Means I ain't sharin' my candy.

Suddenly the day was gone, night came out from under each tree and spread.

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, Voices whisper in the trees, Tonight is Halloween!

She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can't ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again — on principle.

For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.

And that's when I realized, when you're a kid you don't need a costume, you ARE superman.

You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.

the fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light

Oh how the candles will be lit and the wood of worm burn in a fiery dust. For on all Hallow's Eve will the spirits come to play, and only the fruit of thy womb will satisfy their endless roaming.

With a few swift steps, Adrian stood in front of me again. The wall was only a couple inches behind me, and I had nowhere to go. He made no threatening moves, but he did clasp my hands and hold them to his chest while leaning down to me. “No, you will listen. For once, you’re going to hear something that doesn’t fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason. Because this isn’t reasonable. If you’re terrified, believe me—this scares the hell out of me, too. You asked about Rose? I tried to be a better person for her—but it was to impress her, to get her to want me. But when I’m around you, I want to be better because… well, because it feels right. Because I want to. You make me want to become something greater than myself. I want to excel. You inspire me in every act, every word, every glance. I look at you, and you’re like… like light made into flesh. I said it on Halloween and meant every word: you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen walking this earth. And you don’t even know it. You have no clue how beautiful you are or how brightly you shine.

And the band—oh, sweet mercy—the band. They're like a cross between mini Justin Biebers and the Jonas Brothers, and the Halloween covers they're playing make my ears bleed.

Dear Great Pumpkin, Halloween is now only a few days away. Children all over the world await you coming. When you rise out of the pumpkin patch that night, please remember I am your most loyal follower. Have a nice trip. Don't forget to take out flight insurance.

Who are you writing to, Linus?" "This is the time of year to write to the Great Pumpkin. On Halloween Night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!" "You must be crazy! When are you going to stop believing in something that isn't true?" "When *you* stop believing in that fellow with a red suit and the white beard who goes, 'Ho, ho, ho!'" "We're obviously separated by denominational differences.

The perfect weather of Indian Summer lengthened and lingered, warm sunny days were followed by brisk nights with Halloween a presentiment in the air.

I think crush is the perfect word to describe it, too, because it simultaneously means 'to have a brief infatuation with someone unattainable' and 'to be violently squashed.

Person 1: "Stay back....I have a demon inside of me." Person 2: "Let me get closer...I have a hell inside me where your demons can live." (from Dark Winter, #2 - out Halloween 2014)

In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue.

Don’t play that game with me, Acheron. Tell me what I need to know! (Xypher) Nice tone. We should rent you out to record Halloween albums. (Acheron)

Right. Because there’s no bigger sign of commitment than a Halloween dance

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Christmas and the others can end up making you sad, because you know you should be happy. But on Halloween you get to become anything that you want to be

Most people will tell you growing up means you stop believing in Halloween things - I’m telling you the reverse. You start to grow up when you understand that the stuff that scares you is part of the air you breathe.

The past is the father of the present.

There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

No, you will listen. For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason. Because this isn't reasonable. If you're terrified, believe me--this scares the hell out of me, too. You asked about Rose? I tried to be a better person for her--but it was to impress her, to get her to want me. But when I'm around you, I want to be better because...well, because it feels right. Because I want to. You make me want to become something greater than myself. I want to excel. You inspire me in every act, every word, every glance. I look at you, and you're like...like light made into flesh. I said it on Halloween and meant every word: you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen walking this earth. And you don't even know it. You have no clue how beautiful you are or how brightly you shine.

Yes, Halloween excites me. That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption cliches of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.

Agatha, you dressed as a bride for Halloween." "Weddings are scary.

You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.

Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.

Halloween is the night to have the most demonic powers available to use to kill and destroy those you hate.

...just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.

There is a place, September, oh, very far from Pandemonium. A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning and it is always, just always Halloween.

I refuse to have sex with someone who doesn’t have a headboard. I’m not that desperate—yet. My vagina has officially been closed for so long I’m afraid a Spirit Halloween is going to move in.

Will we ever stop being afraid of nights and death? When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

They say it's the woman's prerogative to change her mind. But that's wrong. Guys are the one who get to say, "You know what? I don't want to be with you after all." They get to say it after they've sucked all the sweetness out of you, just like those cheap, liquid filled wax candy things we used to get for Halloween. They leave you dried up, empty piece of wax, and head off to find somebody else who still has some sweetness inside.

He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring. ("The October Game")

To keep something wild is far more difficult than to preserve it.

You want beauty,” said Hercule Poirot. “Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth I want. Always truth.

People think that ghosts only come out at night, or on Halloween, when the world is dark and the walls are thin. But the truth is, ghosts are everywhere. In the bread aisle at your grocery store, in the middle of you grandmother's garden, in the front seat on your bus. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

Only sad sacks and conformists need things like no kiss on New Year's Eve to remind them to feel lonely. They're as bad as the people who need St. Patty's Day as an excuse to get drunk or Halloween to wear slutty outfits. You can feel sorry for yourself and dress like a hooker all year round: Hallmark never needs to know.

But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin.

Principal Brill, those costumes were made by my mother. My mother, who has stage four small-cell lung cancer. My mother, who will never watch her little boy celebrate another Halloween again. My mother, who will more than likely experience a year of 'lasts'. Last Christmas. Last birthday. Last Easter. And if God is willing, her last Mother's Day. My mother, who when asked by her nine-year-old son if he could be her cancer for Halloween, had no choice but to make him the best cancerous tumor-riden lung costume she could. So if you think it's so offensive, I suggest you drive them home yourself and tell my mother to her face. Do you need my address?

When you wish for something over and over again and it doesn't come true, something else happens; not only do you give up, but you resent your wish and you resent wishing.

Hold the dark holiday in your palms, Bite it, swallow it and survive, Come out the far black tunnel of el Día de Muerte And be glad, ah so glad you are… alive! Calavera…Calavera…

Brendan suddenly 'came out' to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone 'come out' to you is the 'pretending to be surprised' part. You want him to feel like what he’s telling you is Big. It’s like, if somebody tells you they’re pregnant, you don’t say, 'I did notice you’ve been eating like a hog lately.' Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don’t want him to realize that everybody’s known this since he was ten and he wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion, but Bert Lahr. 'Oh, my gosh, no waaaay?' You stall, trying to think of something more substantial to say. 'Is everyone, like, freaking out? What a… wow.

Put that in your mustache and smoke it.

The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.

Positive. In other news, Marcie's throwing a Halloween party here at the farmhouse." Patch smiled. "Grey - Millar family drama?" "The theme is famous couples from history. Could she be any less original? Worse, she's roped my mom into this. They went shopping for decorations today. For three whole hours. It's like they're suddenly best friends." I picked up another apple slice and made a face at it. "Marcie is ruining everything. I wanted Scott to go with Vee, but Marcie already convinced him to go with her." Patch's smile widened. I aimed my best sulky look at him. "This isn't funny. Marcie is destroying my life. Whose side are you on anyway?" Patch raised his hands in surrender. "I'm staying out of this.

Real life... Witches: Wiccan practitioners. Werewolves: rare strain of rabies. Zombies: Prions/Plague. Vampires: Hemophilia/Porphyria

It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of... Boys. And it was the afternoon of Halloween. And all the houses shut against a cool wind. And the town was full of cold sunlight. But suddenly, the day was gone. Night came out from under each tree and spread.

Impossible is Nothing,” it said. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

It's not that I want you to be a certain way--don't you want a boyfriend?" "Why bother with that? Let's find incubi." "Incubi?" "Demons. Plural. Like octopi. And we're much more likely to find them"--her voice dropped conspiratorially--"while swimming naked in the Atlantic a week before Halloween than practically anywhere else I can think of.

It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being. Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO. The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile. What a scamp.

I turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I'd told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that'd be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.

I got a rock.

I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor.

Waiting is one of life's hardships. It is hard enough to wait for chocolate cream pie while burnt roast beef is still on your plate. It is plenty difficult to wait for Halloween when the tedious month of September is still ahead of you. But to wait for one's adopted uncle to come home while a greedy and violent man is upstairs was one of the worst waits the Baudelaires had ever experienced.

An incomplete list: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn't true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away. But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

For me, Halloween is the best holiday in the world. It even beats Christmas. I get to dress up in a costume. I get to wear a mask. I get to go around like every other kid with a mask and nobody thinks I look weird. Nobody takes a second look. Nobody notices me. Nobody knows me. I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.

We were in such good moods, we even decided to hit Todd's house for candy. Sam rang the doorbell, and when it opened, this hideous, rubber monster face roared at us. Sam screamed. Todd started laughing and took off the mask. I yelled, "Put it back on! Put it back on! Your hideousness is terrifying!" Todd did a fake yuk-yuk-yuk at my joke. "What are you guys supposed to be? Is it Prom Night Massacre or something?" Sam sighed at Todd's obvious stupidity. "We're zombie princesses, Todd. Can't you tell?" She stuck her arms straight out in front of her and said, "BRAINS! BRAINS!" I patted Sam on the head and said, "Sorry, Sam. You're wasting your time with this one.

Autumn. It's crispness, it's anticipation, it's melancholia, it's cool breezes replacing summer's heat. It's long days in the field, a harvest festival when work's done, a cheering crowd in a football stadium, chrysanthemums punctuating a somber landscape. It's Halloween highjinx, pumpkins grinning toothy smiles, the crack of pecan pressed against pecan. It's the first curls of woodsmoke, fresh blisters from pushing a rake. It's crisp and fresh and mellow and snug, solemn and melancholy. And it's very, very welcome.

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits.

Mr. Crossley suddenly wondered why he was why he was worrying about the note. It was only a joke, after all. He cleared his throat. Everyone looked up hopefully. 'Somebody,' said Mr. Crossley, 'seems to have sent me a Halloween message.' And he read out the note: 'SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH.' 6B thought this was splendid news. Hands shot up all over the room like a bed of beansprouts. 'It's me, Mr. Crossley!' 'Mr. Crossley, I'm the witch!' 'Can I be the witch, Mr. Crossley?' 'Me, Mr. Crossley, me, me, me!

Many people object to “wasting money in space” yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA’s budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadians spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Similarly, NASA’s budget is not spent in space but right here on Earth, where it’s invested in American businesses and universities, and where it also pays dividends, creating new jobs, new technologies and even whole new industries.

Dear ignoramuses, Halloween is not 'a yankee holiday' celebrated only by gigantic toddlers wearing baseball caps back to front and spraying 'automobiles' with eggs. This is ignorance. Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that. Pinatas on the other hand are heathen monstrosities and have no place in a civilised society.

While Catholics usually paint the Savior suffering, Mormon artists tend to depict Him as a rugged Idaho mountain man – the kind of Jesus you wouldn’t mind dating. In this particular picture he was healing a blonde child, because blondes were big in Jerusalen in 33 A.D. (131)

HALLOWE'EN Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite All are on their rounds to-night,- In the wan moon's silver ray Thrives their helter-skelter play. Fond of cellar, barn,or stack, True unto the almanac, They present to credulous eyes Strange hobgoblin mysteries. Cabbage-stomps-straws wet with dew- Apple-skins, and chestnuts too, And a mirror for some lass, Show what wonders come to pass. Doors they move, and gates they hide, Mischiefs that on moon-beams ride Are their deeds, and, by their spells, Love records its oracles. Don't we all, of long ago, By the ruddy fireplace glow, In the kitchen and the hall, Those queer, coofllke pranks recall? Eery shadows were they then- But to-night they come again; Were we once more but sixteen, Precious would be Halloween.

When People Ask How I’m Doing I want to say, my depression is an angry deity, a jealous god a thirsty shadow that wrings my joy like a dishrag and makes juice out of my smile. I want to say, getting out of bed has become a magic trick. I am probably the worst magician I know. I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left and my washing machine has been broken for months, but I’d rather not ruin someone’s day with my tragic honesty so instead I treat my face like a pumpkin. I pretend that it’s Halloween. I carve it into something acceptable. I laugh and I say, “I’m doing alright.

I even tried to usher her into this century by explaining that wearing rainbows didn’t automatically mean a person was gay. The Lucky Charms leprechaun was not necessarily a homosexual. The Care Bear with the rainbow on his tummy did not have a life partner. He didn’t even have genitals. (6)

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife who washes the socks and the children, and returns phone calls and library books and types. In other words, the reason there are so many more Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius. It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A. And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween. Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater matinees--on Saturdays? Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure, chicken pox or chipped teeth? Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference. Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training. And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help. I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader, and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted. Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny, tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary, and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse unless she also helps with the laundry.

What's a Dullahan?' 'He's a headless horseman, in the service of the banshee.' 'Headless?' 'Yes.' 'Seriously?' 'Yes.' 'So he has no head?' 'That's usually what headless means.' 'No head at all?' 'You're really getting hung up on this headless thing, aren't you?' 'It's just kind of silly, even for us.' 'Yet you spend your days with a living skeleton.' 'But at least he has a head.' 'True.' 'He even has a spare.

There where hundreds of graves. There where hundreds of women. There were hundreds of daughters. There were hundreds of sons. And hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of candles. The whole graveyard was one swarm of candleshine as if a population of fireflies had heard of a Grand Conglomeration and had flown here to settle in and flame upon the stones and light the brown faces and the dark eyes and the black hair.

Harvey wasn't interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they'd been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two. Autumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland. And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

Nobody moved. Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I'll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can't find her.” Then... some idiot turned on the lights. ("The October Game")

I should add, however, that, particularly on the occasion of Samhain, bonfires were lit with the express intention of scaring away the demonic forces of winter, and we know that, at Bealltainn in Scotland, offerings of baked custard were made within the last hundred and seventy years to the eponymous spirits of wild animals which were particularly prone to prey upon the flocks - the eagle, the crow, and the fox, among others. Indeed, at these seasons all supernatural beings were held in peculiar dread. It seems by no means improbable that these circumstances reveal conditions arising out of a later solar pagan worship in respect of which the cult of fairy was relatively greatly more ancient, and perhaps held to be somewhat inimical.

...Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.