Penny Dreadful Quotes

He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.

Multiple personalities. Don't freak out but I'm pretty sure I have them. Not a clinical thing, not a disease. But a distraction to be sure. There are maybe six or seven pretty concrete versions of myself knocking around in here and I mean it gets fucking crowded when everybody is drunk or talking at once.

A friend is like anything else. A dog, a plant. You ignore them and they tend to die on you.

In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look over the map of mankind.

Problems don't always get fixed. Lots of the time things are boring or dumb for no good reason. Or even terrible. And you can't do anything about it. That's life.

I'm cold, Religiously cold.

Reality is in the business of killing off fiction.

I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars.

...men are much softer than women, more sentimental. They cry at the movies and pretend not to. The male of the species is weak. He doesn’t tolerate pain well.

All superheroes had pretty much the same problem. Batman was flash and sexy compared to Bruce Wayne and even Robin was a lot cooler than Dick Grayson. As for Superman, well. It was a fucking miracle that Clark Kent had never committed suicide.

Open your eyes, boy. Your eyes. Open your eyes and no more turn aside and brood.

What do you like to read?” The corner of Wren’s mouth lifted involuntarily into a smile. Apparently, he appreciated the change in topic as well. “Guess.” He considered it as he turned another page. “Theologians.” Wren snorted. “Goddess, no. I’m not so boring as you.” “Penny dreadfuls?” “Suitably lurid,” she said, “but no. Medical textbooks.” Hal’s expression grew puzzled. “I see.

For the poor and infirm, the hopeless and voiceless, we do not relent. We do not forget. We are the Dread Penny Society.

Dreadful deeds were obvious. The divine was often harder to see.

But that’s not how things work, brother. This is not a penny dreadful. Real life is messy, scary, and uncertain.

Traveling all alone,are you?" One of them asked with what could be described only as a leer worthy of any penny dreadful. Blast. "Let me pass," I demanded. Where the devil was everyone? "There's a toll,love," he insisted. "Didn't you know?" We were well hidden by the luggage and a shroud of steam,thick as London fog. The third boy looked uncomfortable, as if he wanted to stop his companions but didn't know how. Fat lot of good his squirming would do me. "Give us a kiss,then.

A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode. 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said. 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously. 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said. 'Anything, sir, anything!' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.

Because you don’t live in a book. Nobody does, silly. Things never happen the way they would in a book. There isn’t foreshadowing.

I came home to find three rocks on my desk and a card with a penguin on the front. Seeing it was from Greg, I did a little happy dance as I bounced into my room, reading his inscription. Dearest Fiona, I’m missing you dreadfully. It’s been an age, I don’t think you’ll recognize me when next we meet. I’ve put on ten stone and lost all my hair. And an eye. I hope you fancy a fat bald man with an eye patch. Come out with me on Friday. Finals will finally be over and it’ll be time to celebrate. I’ll pick you up at four. We’ll do a first date do-over, eat at Manganiello’s again, plus a new, improved surprise. Also, FYI: Gentoo penguins mate for life. Whereas Adélie penguins prostitute themselves for rocks. I’d like to be your Gentoo penguin. -Greg P.S. Unless you’re open to a rock arrangement. If so, please find my first down payment enclosed.

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene deceased To Ray deceased To Francy permanent psychosis To Kathy permanent brain damage To Jim deceased To Val massive permanent brain damage To Nancy permanent psychosis To Joanne permanent brain damage To Maren deceased To Nick deceased To Terry deceased To Dennis deceased To Phil permanent pancreatic damage To Sue permanent vascular damage To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.

I would go to Australia, at the bottom of the world," said Tristran, "and bring you. Um." He ransacked the penny dreadfuls in his head, trying to remember if any of their heroes had visited Australia. "A kangaroo," he said. "And opals," he added. He was fairly certain about the opals.

If you ever wish for a listening ear or a supportive shoulder, those happen to be my two best features.

I swear, gentlemen would be useless without women around.

There’s always someone needing saving. At times that someone’s been me.

Heroes come in a lot of forms, Brogan. Be the one you are best suited to being.

Anything is better than this penny-dreadful tale I’ve found myself in.

It’s not real,” Mr. Clare replies. “True evil is, above all things, seductive. When the devil knocks at your door, he doesn’t have cloven hooves, he’s beautiful.

Never underestimate a woman, Henry.

Remember us better than we are.

She is a corpse, the kind brought back to life to consume the living and wreak satanic havoc like in the Penny Dreadfuls she used to read as a child.

Can such a man, you ask, be a leader of the masses? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The masses — by which I mean not the proletariat, but the anonymous collective body into which all of us, high and low, amalgamate at certain moments — react most strongly to someone who least resembles them. Normality coupled with talent may make a politician popular. But to provoke extremes of love and hate, to be worshipped like a god or loathed like the devil, is given only to a truly exceptional person who is poles apart from the masses, be it far above or far below them. If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness. Both, and this is decisive, came from inaccessible regions, from some sort of “beyond.” The one from a sphere of sublime spirituality where the cultures of three millennia and two continents hold a symposium; the other from a jungle far below the depths plumbed by the basest penny dreadfuls, from an underworld where demons rise from a brewed-up stench of petty-bourgeois back rooms, doss-houses, barrack latrines, and the hangman’s yard. From their different “beyonds” they both drew

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

It's interesting that penny-pinching is an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains. The majority of Americans buy bottled drinking water, for example, even though water runs from the faucets at home for a fraction of the cost, and government quality standards are stricter for tap water than for bottled. At any income level, we can be relied upon for categorically unnecessary purchases: portable-earplug music instead of the radio; extra-fast Internet for leisure use; heavy vehicles to transport light loads; name-brand clothing instead of plainer gear. "Economizing," as applied to clothing, generally means looking for discount name brands instead of wearing last year's clothes again. The dread of rearing unfashionable children is understandable. But as a priority, "makes me look cool" has passed up "keeps arteries functional" and left the kids huffing and puffing (fashionably) in the dust.

The Penny Dreadfuls emerge,pulsating with excitement and energy,from...the staff room. Okay. So it's not as glamorous as emerging from a backstage, but they do look GREAT.Well,two of them do. The bassist is the same as always. Reggie used to come into work, mooching free tickets off Toph for the latest comic book movies. He has these long bangs that droop over half his face and cover his eyes,and I could never tell what he thought about anything. I'd be like, "How was the new Iron Man?" And he'd say, "Fine," in this bored voice. And because his eyes were hidden,I didn't know if he meant a good fine, or a so-so fine,or a bad fine. It was irritating.

What we face is not a loss of books but the loss of a world. As in Alexandria after Aristotle’s time, or the universities and monasteries of the early Renaissance, or the cluttered-up research libraries of the nineteenth century, the Word shifts again in its modes, tending more and more to dwell in pixels and bits instead of paper and ink. It seems to disappear thereby, as it must have for the ancient Peripatetics, who considered writing a spectral shibboleth of living speech; or the princely collectors of manuscripts in the Renaissance, who saw the newly recovered world of antiquity endangered by the brute force of the press; or the lovers of handmade books in the early nineteenth century, to whom the penny dreadful represented the final dilution of the power of literature. And yet, the very fact that the library has endured these cycles seems to offer hope. In its custody of books and the words they contain, the library has confronted and tamed technology, the forces of change, and the power of princes time and again.

Though her fingers were wrapped around his, he felt the warmth of her touch around his heart.

For all the misery he’d known in life, the man’s spirits never dropped permanently.

Education works miracles. It changes lives. I’ll never stop fighting for more children to have that opportunity.

Passing through difficulties is made harder by passing through them alone.

Theirs would be a very happy, never dull, ever after.

No matter how far one wanders from home, the heart still longs to know it.

Having her near didn’t eliminate his worries, didn’t solve his problems, but it helped him face them.

For a confirmed bachelor, you have a remarkably good grasp of what it means to love so entirely.

Vera took pride in being able to sort out the mystery a little ahead of the story.

There’s nothing shameful in being the one who follows through on orders. Not everyone has to be the one giving the orders.

Everybody’s dying, she said. Just pick a disease.

truly, on the brink of the tomb no animosity should ever find a resting-place in the human heart.

Caring about people is nothing to be ashamed of.

Grabbed his cane—a sword concealed inside.

Life is often a struggle. There’s something beautiful about having someone who is willing to walk with you through it.

Well, then. I think that makes you pretty well married.” Fletcher stuffed the paper back in his pocket. “See you both at your funeral.

When one lacks the opportunity to rewrite one’s words, one is far more likely to use them incorrectly.

Seeds sown in dread never bloom because fear makes for shallow soil.

Tristran sat at the top of the spire of cloud and wondered why none of the heroes of the penny dreadfuls he used to read so avidly were ever hungry. His stomach rumbled, and his hand hurt him so. Adventures are all very well in their place, he thought, but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain. Still, he was alive, and the wind was in his hair, and the cloud was scudding through the sky like a galleon at full sail. Looking out over the world from above, he could never remember feeling so alive as he did at that moment. There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before. He understood that he was, in some way, above his problems, just as he was above the world.

There was nothing to be done but write him into the next installment of The Lady and the Highwayman and make certain something miserable happened to him. One did not treat an author poorly without consequences.

Dear God, what is this Aethyr I am come upon? What spirits are thee, labouring in what heavenly light? No... No, this is dazzle, but not yet divinity. Nor are these heathen wraiths about me spirits, lacking even that vitality. What, then? Am I, like Saint John the Divine, vouchsafed a glimpse of those last times? Are these the days my death shall spare me? It would seem we are to suffer an apocalypse of cockatoos... Morose, barbaric children playing joylessly with their unfathomable toys. Where comes this dullness in your eyes? How has your century numbed you so? Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder? Your days were born in blood and fires, whereof in you I may not see the meanest spark! Your past is pain and iron! Know yourselves! With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured by history. Its black root succours you. It is INSIDE you. Are you asleep to it, that cannot feel its breath upon your neck, nor see what soaks its cuffs? See me! Wake up and look upon me! I am come amongst you. I am with you always! You are the sum of all preceding you, yet seem indifferent to yourselves. A culture grown disinterested, even in its own abysmal wounds. ... How would I seem to you? Some antique fiend or penny dreadful horror, yet YOU frighten ME! You have not souls. With you I am alone. Alone in an Olympus. Though accomplished in the sciences, your slightest mechanisms are beyond my grasp. They HUMBLE me, yet touch you not at all. This disaffection. THIS is Armageddon.

The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!' He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the Police!' He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!' He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!' He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!' He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. 'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!' He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!' He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!' He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!

(For much the same reason, early owners discovered that if they charged odd amounts like 49 cents or 99 cents the cashier would very probably have to open the drawer to extract a penny change, obviating the possibility of the dreaded unrecorded transaction. Only later did it dawn on merchants that $1.99 had the odd subliminal quality of seeming markedly cheaper than $2.)

how from time to time some young and beautiful nun had suddenly disappeared, to the surprise and alarm of her companions; how piercing shrieks had been heard to issue from the interior of the building, by those who passed near it at night,—and how the inmates themselves were often aroused from their slumbers by strange noises resembling the rattling of chains, the working of ponderous machinery, and the revolution of huge wheels.

The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God. The Catholic faith is the reconciliation because it is the realisation both of mythology and philosophy. It is a story and in that sense one of a hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life. But above all, it is a reconciliation because it is something that can only be called the philosophy of stories. That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies—except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass several tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it. Now this deep and democratic and dramatic instinct is derided and dismissed in all the other philosophies. For all the other philosophies avowedly end where they begin; and it is the definition of a story that it ends differently; that it begins in one place and ends in another. From Buddha and his wheel to Akhen Aten and his disc, from Pythagoras with his abstraction of number to Confucius with his religion of routine, there is not one of them that does not in some way sin against the soul of a story. There is none of them that really grasps this human notion of the tale, the test, the adventure; the ordeal of the free man. Each of them starves the story-telling instinct, so to speak, and does something to spoil human life considered as a romance; either by fatalism (pessimist or optimist) and that destiny that is the death of adventure; or by indifference and that detachment that is the death of drama; or by a fundamental scepticism that dissolves the actors into atoms; or by a materialistic limitation blocking the vista of moral consequences; or a mechanical recurrence making even moral tests monotonous; or a bottomless relativity making even practical tests insecure. There is such a thing as a human story; and there is such a thing as the divine story which is also a human story; but there is no such thing as a Hegelian story or a Monist story or a relativist story or a determinist story; for every story, yes, even a penny dreadful or a cheap novelette, has something in it that belongs to our universe and not theirs. Every short story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgement.

The young man, not much more than a boy, heard the wind. Heard the moan, and heeded it. He stayed. After a day his family, afraid of what they might find, came looking and found him on the side of the terrible mountain. Alive. Alone. They pleaded with him to leave, but, unbelievably, he refused. “He’s been drugged,” said his mother. “He’s been cursed,” said his sister. “He’s been mesmerized,” said his father, backing away. But they were wrong. He had, in fact, been seduced. By the desolate mountain. And his loneliness. And by the tiny green shoots under his feet. He’d done this. He’d brought the great mountain alive again. He was needed. And so the boy stayed, and slowly warmth returned to the mountain. Grass and trees and fragrant flowers returned. Foxes and rabbits and bees came back. Where the boy walked fresh springs appeared and where he sat ponds were created. The boy was life for the mountain. And the mountain loved him for it. And the boy loved the mountain for it too. Over the years the terrible mountain became beautiful and word spread. That something dreadful had become something peaceful. And kind. And safe. Slowly the people returned, including the boy’s family. A village sprang up and the Mountain King, so lonely for so long, protected them all. And every night, while the others rested, the boy, now a young man, walked to the very top of the mountain, and lying down on the soft green moss he listened to the voice deep inside. Then one night while he lay there the young man heard something unexpected. The Mountain King told him a secret.

If Spring-Heeled Jack, or Varney the Vampyre, or the air-pirates, or any of the other blackguards who roamed England, ever caught any of those girls in a dark alley they'd be dead for sure.

I was filled with a sense of doom that dragged my heart down into my boots

Mrs Porter, you see before you the product of an outmoded educational system, which is based upon beating Latin and Greek into a boy’s mind before he has a chance to meet the penny-dreadful.

My dear Miss Newport,” he said, “I would wait a lifetime for you.

I’m not good for many things, but I do hope I offer people a spot of happiness.

The stories Papa resented having in the shop gave her a sense of friendship and adventure.

I’ve a fondness for the tales.

You’ve a way with words.

Reclaiming some dreams isn’t selfish. Making your life what you want it to be isn’t selfish.

Two make the load lighter. My parents always used to say that. ’Twas their way of reminding us that bearing a burden alone makes it heavier than it needs to be.

Tis moments like this when I wish I had the resources of a lord. Breaks m’ heart not to be able to help people who’re needing it. There’re far too many suffering people in this world, and I’ve far too little ability to help them.

She said she’d found friendship in the characters she read about.

Her entire face lit when she was enthusiastic about something. And that something, more often than not, was characters and stories and tales of adventure.

She rose and reluctantly released his hand. Until she’d had that connection, she hadn’t realized how much she’d longed for a reassuring touch. For years, she’d reconciled herself to being, in many ways, alone. She’d more or less accepted that the characters she came to love in the stories she read on the sly would be her only reliable companions. Vera was pleased to be wrong.

Meg was surprised at how grown up he sounded as he thanked God not only for the food, their house and all the animals, but also for Nita and Ace. When he prayed for Ace to come home, Meg couldn’t help the rush of tears or the way her breath caught at the knowledge that Teddy had come to look up to Ace, to depend on him. To love him. And no wonder. Ace had been more of a father to him than Elton had ever been. She dreaded the day Teddy realized that Ace wasn’t coming back.

Envy said, “Girl, I remember well, ye, who I flung from Hell, and not a day has passed, I haven’t missed the loss of your soul that I mourned, I’ve been bereft and forlorn, for the sweet taste of your flesh I’ve yet to kiss. But no worries—bygones, that’s the past—long gone, I don’t hold a grudge, no, in no way. And though your family they did swindle my joy of flaying ye on a spindle, I begrudge ye not a little, so let’s play. So, merely toss your token in my well, and all your dreams I will unveil, for ye alone, them I’ll grant. Come closer, little Penny, your hands I know are not empty, ye have something I dreadfully want.

Maggie.” He’d warned her this time a moment before he slid his arms around her. After a minute pause to discard the dictates of good sense, she turned to hide her face against his chest. For a long moment, she let him hold her, until words rose up in her aching throat. “I want to cry.” Stupid words. Maybe he hadn’t heard them. “I think it’s worse,” he said, his hand stroking across her back, “when you want to and you can’t. It’s an indignity to cry, a worse indignity when you can’t even cry.” She nodded against his chest. Why did he know such a thing? Was it because his sisters had been through an ordeal? Because he knew half of the beau monde’s sins and mistakes? “Stop thinking, Maggie Windham. Everybody is occasionally blue-deviled.” His voice was very quiet, right near her ear. She liked the sound and feel of it, but he was wrong. Years and years of looking over her shoulder, dreading each day’s mail, pinching pennies and carrying secrets was not simply a case of the blue devils. And the worst, hardest, most difficult part was she could see the rest of her life falling into the same dismal pattern, with only death promising her any relief. Hazlit’s hand went from tracing patterns on her back to cradling her jaw. He shifted his hold subtly, turning Maggie’s face up to his. When his lips settled on hers, it was so softly Maggie wanted to groan with the pleasure of it. He tasted of the almond icing on the tea cake, his mouth sweet and warm against hers. She leaned into him, knowing he had the physical strength to support them both. There was no hurry in his kiss, no fumbling or force. It dawned on her that it was a kiss of invitation, an offer for her to explore him intimately. A gesture of trust. She

Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed themselves; then he came forward and moved along the line, placing the Hosts in the mouths of the people. Cecil had a very strange feeling; she felt that this was at the same time the most natural and the most unnatural thing she had ever seen. They were like little birds being fed by their mother, and yet it was grown people who knelt to receive what looked like a paper penny of bread on their tongues. She knew at once why the Mass provoked such love and such hate. Either what they believe is true, or else it is a dreadful delusion, she thought.

Because, if there's one thing we've learned from penny dreadfuls, it's that when you find yourself in a place like this, you must never be a candy ass; you've got to prove yourself from day one. You've got to win their respect.

There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.

He swung their arms between them. It was, perhaps, a childish gesture, but it lightened her heart and eased her mind.

Life was so often heavy. Having a friend who lightened the load was a welcome thing.

There weren’t anything in the world quite like seeing someone happy.

His embraces had always been tender and gentle. In a world that demanded she be hard, Baz’s arms offered her softness.

I like talking with you too. I ain’t always been able to trust people enough for talking. I’ve needed to, though.

A good teacher is the only reason I made anything of myself.

My father always said I was too bold for my own good.

He kept mum on near everything but did not for a moment give the impression of timidity.

Too many men considered themselves fully entitled to a woman’s time and attention regardless of her feelings on the matter.

Keeping secrets saved lives, but it also complicated things.

Sometimes conversations required the most ridiculous of dances.

Or perhaps the act of conquering was simply a penny dreadful writ large, with one nation as the dashing highwayman and another as the abducted maiden. First one ravished, then one loved.

Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most baffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face clean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes with confidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was nothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark, almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a crescendo of nervous fancy that had gone before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme; they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story about pennies being put on the eyes of the dead.

That he had not behaved as if he adored her, that she would not indeed have left him if he had, that he had most steadfastly refused indeed to become her husband, that he had misused her dreadfully, that he had been ill-tempered and critical of her, that he had been a bad provider, that his own pride had refused to allow her to add so much as one franc of her own money to the family budget – all these things were as nothing to Adele.

The new Gothic is exemplified by films such as Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak and television series like Showtime’s Penny Dreadful and Netflix’s Alias Grace.

More recently, the Showtime television series Penny Dreadful offered a rather heartbreaking storyline involving the monster and his horrified creator.

I blink down at her, trying to sort out the dread from the horny excitement—and then sort those from the professional guilt I feel for being so deeply fucked up when my job is to un-fuck other people.

Apparently inching her way toward this new branch of her life wasn’t her way; she had run at it at full speed.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.” ​— ​Herman Melville, Moby Dick