Michael Mcdowell Quotes

Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the impossible, and make it seem not only possible--but inevitable.

I would be perfectly willing if a publisher came up to me and said, "I need a novel about underwater Nazi cheerleaders and it has to be 309 pages long and I need fourteen chapters and a prologue.

In the hour before a thunderstorm, the color of the forest deepens: the pine needles take on a dense vibrant greenness they possess at no other time, the slender trunks go black, and the leaden sky above sinks lower by the minute.

Savage mothers eat their children!

All deaths are sudden, no matter how gradual the dying may be.

To have a family is real strange,” said India thoughtfully. “All these people you wouldn’t have anything to do with except that they’re related to you.

I am a commercial writer and I'm proud of that. I am writing things to be put in the bookstore next month. I think it is a mistake to try to write for the ages.

Alcoholism is a disease,” she said. “Like athlete’s foot. Or herpes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Luker and I have lots of friends who are alcoholics. And speed freaks too.” “Well,

And among adults, adultery is an unmentionable thing, which only occurs in the Bible and in Mobile.

India had previously entertained no sympathy for the Southern way of life, with its pervasive friendliness, its offhanded viciousness, its overwhelming lassitude.

She had got beyond despair.

she hates that levee the way you and I hate hell and the Republicans.

It’s bad when the dead talk in dreams,” said Odessa.

Daylight had not brought a solution, but it had accorded indifference.

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon. —Walt Whitman Sequel to Drum-Taps

I sort of wish that was what happened though, Ginny, because that would mean the girl is all right. Fourteen-year-old girls have run off before." Ginny eyed the sheriff severely. "Not fourteen-year-old girls who had grandmas like Evelyn Larkin.

Southerners are an easygoing race when it comes to aberrations of conduct. They will react with anger if something out of the ordinary is presented as a possible future occurrence; but if an unusual circumstance is discovered to be an established fact, they will usually accept it without rancor or judgment as part of the normal order of things.

I never worked on a farm, he told himself ruefully, but I think I know a vegetable when I see one.

Merle Weaver stroked the little girl's hair and thought of the two corpses in the rear of the truck.

She’s got manners, but what has she got in the way of morals?” “Oh,” said Luker blithely, “she and I don’t have any morals. We have to get along with a scruple or two.” “I

Benjamin Stallworth understood his shortcomings and was rendered unhappy by that understanding. He was upright enough to wish for correction but too weak to enforce it upon himself.

They placed the board between them on the kitchen table, and Becca took the suddenly inspired precaution of sprinkling the planchette with holy water taken from a bottle in the pantry placed next to the vanilla extract.

To them all, Beldame represented the fair and possible reward for distress, misfortune, and labor in this world—it was to them a heaven on earth, and resembled the other, preached-of heaven in that it was bright, remote, timeless, and empty.

That her niece should find such profound pleasure in the company of a thirteen-year-old black girl--and, more to the point, always within the precincts of Elinor's house--was a slap in Mary-Love's face. She decided, without saying anything more to James, to wreck Grace's perfection of happiness. Grace would learn that she, Mary-Love, was the source of all felicity within the Caskey family.

That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment-these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men's real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn't control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions.

In the middle of the afternoon, when the heat was at its worst, having accumulated around the concrete since early in the morning, I had ten minutes or so of respite in my tiny office. The walls there were blistering. I could scarcely breathe. But I fled there as if it had been a cool, wet, autumn day inside. I was not looking for relief from the heat so much as relief from the crowds. They licked away my being with their idiot tongues.

Mary-Love liked to see herself as the family cornucopia, dispensing all manner of good things, unstintingly, unceasingly. She considered herself amply rewarded by her children's gratitude, and if she perceived that her children were not sufficiently grateful, she could make something of that, too.

No matter what you've gone through, no matter what you've done and suffered, no matter what horrible mistakes you've made, no matter what you've given up that you should have held on to, no matter what you've held on to that you should have let go, no matter what has happened to make you unhappy, you cannot wish for it to have happened any other way.

Somebody might start to take you serious, and lift your chin with a rifle barrel. Lift it right through the top of your damned head.

Daylight had not brought a solution, but it had accorded indifference. Having

È un errore madornale credere che i pettegolezzi interessino più alle donne che agli uomini.

You know what you should have done, added Luker, you should have ripped his balls off and stapled them to the back of his throat.

I had never liked my parents so much that I wished to be reminded of them every time I walked into a room. I

There’s no point in advertising a circus when everybody hates the clown.

In the night, the house settled. Creaks sounded in the hallways like errant footsteps, windows popped in their frames, china rattled in the cupboards, and pictures suddenly slipped awry on the walls.

To the little girl the house seemed a gigantic head, and she only a morsel of meat conveniently positioned in its gaping mouth. The front porch was that grinning mouth, the white porch railing its lower teeth, the ornamental wooden frieze above its upper teeth, the painted wicker chair on which she perched its green wagging tongue. Frances sat and rocked and wondered when the jaws would clamp shut.

No mother and daughter in Perdido were closer than Mary Love Caskey and Sister. But it was not to be supposed that either told the other everything she thought or knew. In fact, each of them liked to keep little secrets from the other. Secrets which could be sprung at some opportune moment to produce a grand effect, rather in the manner of a little boy tossing lighted firecrackers beneath his sister's bed while she napped on a hot summer afternoon.

Southerners are an easygoing race when it comes to aberrations of conduct. They will react with anger if something out of the ordinary is presented as a possible future occurrence; but if an unusual circumstance is discovered to be an established fact, they will usually accept it without rancor or judgment as part of the normal order of things. To have informed the men who hung about the seed and feed stores that two women had bought Gavin Pond and were turning it into the biggest farm in the county would have brought out calls to repeal the voting rights amendment; but when confronted with Grace, the men were perfectly willing to accept her, her cousin Lucille, and Lucille's little boy.

Grace began to understand. "I have friends," she protested. "I have Zaddie." "Zaddie is just a little colored girl," Mary-Love pointed out. "It's all right to play with Zaddie, but she's not your real friend. John Robert can be your real little friend.

Is Zaddie Sapp deformed because she was born with black skin?” “Of course not—” “Are Grace and Lucille deformed because they have given up men and live out at Gavin Pond Farm together?” “No, Mama, that’s not—” “That’s how they were born, darling! Zaddie was born with black skin and Grace Caskey was born to dote on girls, and just because they’re different, do you think Creola Sapp should have said, ‘I’m not going to give birth to this child’? Do you think Genevieve and James should have said, ‘We don’t want a little baby if she’s not going to grow up to be just like everybody else in this town’?

What he did know was that Elinor was very much like his mother: strong-willed and dominant, wielding power in a fashion he could never hope to emulate. That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment—these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men’s real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn’t control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions.

La cosa su cui Ivey l'aveva messo in guardia lo afferrò. Gli bloccò le braccia lungo i fianchi con una forza tale che le ossa si frantumarono dall'interno, gli spremette i polmoni finché restarono senz'aria, e lui si preparò ad affrontare la lingua nera e ruvida che gli avrebbe cavato gli occhi. Incapace di trattenersi riaprì le palpebre, ma là sotto, così lontano dalla superficie, non riuscì a vedere nulla. Poi sentì qualcosa di spesso e ruvido che gli premeva contro il naso e la bocca. Quando gli raggiunse gli occhi, Buster Sapp sprofondò in un nero più insondabile, oscuro e pietoso del freddo Perdido. Di lui non si trovò più alcuna traccia, ma nessuno si sarebbe aspettato il contrario.

At breakfast this morning I drank a whole glass of grapefruit juice and it wasn’t till after I had put it down in the sink that I thought about putting vodka in it. And if that’s not being cured, I don’t know what is!

Oh, law! This morning I look one day older than God and a year younger than water! Last night I didn’t close my eyes. At five o’clock this morning I was still awake in my bed, turning and tossing and thinking about Big D.” “Dallas?” “Dying, precious—Big D is death.

The ceilings of hospital rooms are stained with the oily residue of souls spat out of dying patients’ parched mouths. The

- Je suppose que j'aurai quand même du mal à te convaincre d'assister à l'inauguration... - Seigneur, jamais de la vie ! s'exclama Elinor avec un rire enjoué. En plus, je l'ai déjà fêtée à ma façon.

Even the servants seemed to have been affected by the Caskey women’s assumption of power. Zaddie, Ivey, Roxie, and Luvadia did and said what they saw fit to do and say.

What's in that house, child, knows more than you know. What's in that house don't come out of your mind. It don't have to worry 'bout rules and behaving like a spirit ought to behave. It does what it does to fool you, it wants to trick you into believing what's not right. It's got no truth to it. What it did last week it's not gone be doing today. You see something in there, it wasn't there yesterday, it's not gone be there tomorrow. You stand at one of them doors thinking something's behind it—nothing's behind it. It's waiting for you upstairs, it's waiting for you downstairs. It's standing behind you. You think it's buried in the sand, why then, it's gone be standing behind that door after all! And you don't ever know what it is you looking for. You don't ever know what it is you gone see! Wasn't no ghost you saw, wasn't Martha Ann.

There's no point in advertising a circus when everybody hates the clown.

Les frontons, pignons et cheminées qui n'avaient pas été arrachés et emportés par le courant saillaient de la surface sombre et luisante tels des signaux de détresse de pierre, de brique et de bois; si bien que les branchages et les déchets non identifiés - bouts de vêtements, débris de meubles - qui frôlaient leurs appels à l'aide muets, s'y accrochaient dans leur dérive, comme autant d'anneaux de crasse autour de doigts tendus.

La luz del sol que entraba por la ventana iluminada ahora la marca que el agua había dejado sobre el oscuro papel pintado de la pared.

El salón estaba decorado con ramas de cicuta y cedro que esa misma mañana colgaban aún sobre el río Perdido

E comunque i pesci rimangono nei letti dei fiumi, come se non si accorgessero proprio di avere altri dieci metri di spazio sopra la testa in cui poter nuotare. L’acqua di una piena è putrida, piena di cose putride, e i pesci gatto e i persici, pur non amando quella inconsueta oscurità soprastante, nuotano attorno alle solite vecchie rocce, ai cespugli di alghe, ai familiari piloni dei ponti.

Actor Malcolm McDowell once remarked on the director’s peculiar dining habits: scooping up a mouthful of dessert, then a forkful of steak, then back to dessert again. “This is how Napoléon used to eat,” Kubrick explained.

E la casa aveva anche un odore particolare, un misto della sabbia cotta dal sole che la circondava, dell'argilla rossa dell'argine, del Perdido che scorreva oltre il terrapieno, dell'umidità trattenuta dalle mura spesse e dalle stanze grandi e buie, dei cibi preparati da Zaddie in cucina, e di qualcosa che era arrivato quand'era vuota e non se n'era mai andato. Persino nei mesi di siccità, quando i raccolti avvizzivano nei campi e gli alberi delle foreste erano cosí secchi che bastava un fulmine per ridurre in cenere ettari di bosco in cinque minuti, la casa conservava quella nota di acqua di fiume, tanto che le tappezzerie sembravano umide al tatto, le buste nuove si incollavano da sole e l'impasto delle crostate lievitava male. Era come se l'intera casa fosse avviluppata in una foschia invisibile salita dal Perdido.

«Quindi esistono davvero creature che ti mangiano?» «Non in questo ripostiglio» rispose sua madre, con inquietante evasività.

He was being sought for.

India returned to her kneading, but repeated under her breath, “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!

[…] Although it’s hard to imagine it now, there was a time when horror was nearly unrivaled in popularity with the general reader. In the 1970s and ’80s, local bookstores had whole shelves devoted to it. You couldn’t miss them: they were the ones stocked between Mystery and Fantasy/Sci-Fi, with all the black and red covers, the raised titles dripping blood, and the leering skeletons. Lots and lots of skeletons. These books had notoriously short shelf lives, but because there was such a demand for them—owing largely to the success of books like The Exorcist and writers like Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub—it was possible to hack a living if you could turn them out fast enough. A lot of folks tried their hand, and a lot of bad books were published. So many that the market eventually collapsed under its own weight. Among those bad books, though, were some truly great ones written by great writers—writers like Ramsey Campbell, Robert R. McCammon, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, to name just three—who delivered lasting contributions to the genre. While it would be nice to think that all the deserving books were saved from being swept away in the vast tide, that just wasn’t the case. [...] Excerpt from ”Introduction” to Michael McDowell’s ”Blackwater: The Complete Saga” (2017, Kindle edition)

Giggling like schoolgirls we dry our hair. Meg looks like Andie McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I look like Janet Leigh in Psycho before the knife starts shredding the shower curtain.

Barbara, shut up,” said her son Luker. “You know very well why it’s a private funeral.” “Why?” “Because we are the only people in Mobile who would have come. There’s no point in advertising a circus when everybody hates the clown.

it didn’t make a damn bit of difference if he won or lost, he wasn’t gone be saddled with a wife who could drink more than a barnful of Irishmen

The words yesterday and tomorrow might have been excised from their vocabulary: for yesterday had entertained nothing that was worth today’s speech, and tomorrow could promise no change from today.

Saldré adelante y algún día le devolveré el dinero. El aserradero Caskey también saldrá adelante, y mamá, tu serás cada vez más rica. Y cuando te mueras, llenaremos tu ataud con billetes de cien dólares, y te pondremos en el cementerio junto a Genevieve. Supongo que te lo pasarás como nunca, con Genevieve como compañía y todo ese dinero para mantenerte caliente.