Poppy Z Brite Quotes

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.

I believe in whatever gets you throught the night. [...] Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four A.M.knows all my secrets.

There were books about how to be gay; he'd seen them in stores and libraries. Some of them even had diagrams. But there weren't any diagrams about how to fall in love with your best friend and not fuck everything up.

He has 'le coeur comme un artichaud'. Eddy fumbled for her high school French. 'A heart like an artichoke?' 'Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.

You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.

If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.

Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.

When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.

It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.

I'm your nightmare. Did you think you were done with nightmares, now you've become one?

Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.

Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.

I press my hands against my chest, wishing I could somehow be even closer to him. I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.

Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.

Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.

At some point you have to start letting people save their own life.

Let the night come. We are not afraid.

The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green.

If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life.

But if I die without trying again, I'm a coward. I don't mind having regrets about stuff I've done. It's the regrets about stuff I haven't done that bother me.

If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.

With the first kiss his mouth will taste of wormwood.

And what was I if not death's ghostwriter?

I just want to know how you're made," Trevor breathed in his ear. "I love you so much, Zach. I want to climb inside you. I want to taste your brain. I want to feel your heart beating in my hands.

you always felt they were pawns in an indifferent universe, butts of an existential joke with no punch line.

Ah, relationships. If he was lucky, Luke thought, he would never have another one.

the skull always grinned because it knew it would emerge triumphant, that it would comprise the sole identity of the face long after vain baubles like lips and skin and eyes were gone.

In every long-term relationship are a few pockets of deep and dangerous water into which one can step unaware if not careful. Eventually, somebody drowns or the interested parties post warning signs around these pockets.

No", said a voice from the dark doorway. A weary voice, a voice for speaking long after midnight, a voice to be used when all paths are blocked, when castles have fallen to ruins, when morning will not come again.

All at once it hit him: this was power too, just as surely as smashing your fist into someone’s face, just as surely as putting a hammer through someone’s skull. The power to make another person crazy with pleasure instead of fear and pain, to have every cell in another person’s body at your thrall.

Atheists loved to use that term to describe some shadowy force that somehow controlled human destiny, but what the hell did they think the universe was? Did they think the stars and nebulae took an interest in their doings, and if they really meant God, why couldn’t they just say so?

Stay with me.’ His eyes shone. ‘Play with me.

Terry remembered a summer two or three years ago when there had been a plague of luna moths (...) One night Ghost has mused aloud that to the bats, the moths' blood must taste like crème de la menthe.

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

Out here the wild things are healthy, the old trees whose roots find sustenance far below the ill-used layer of topsoil, the occasional rosebush gone to green thicket and thorns, the unstoppable kudzu. It is as if they have decided to take back the land for their own.

The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt.

Sometimes we gotta be brave even when we're scared. We gotta not let being scared keep us from thinkin' straight. That's all brave is, boy, when you come right down to it, not lettin' the fear get you so turned around you start doin' stupid things, instead of what you know you ought to do.

Yielding flesh in his hands, hot with fear, sticky with sweat and blood and already smelling of heaven. Helpless bones his to crack, helpless skin his to rip open, sweet red river his to drink from. He had to do it. He had to know. With his eyes and his hands, with all his body, he had to see.

Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them." Steve backed away. "They bite?" Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way." By geese?" Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff." So how come he didn't die?" This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away.

I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.

They were kissing again, carefully at first, learning the shape and texture of each other's lips, testing the sharpness of the teeth behind them. It's too fast, said a panicky voice in his mind. And too dangerous. He'll drink your juices, taste your brain, crack your soul open like an egg! Hell, I think I want him to do all that.

+ He wasn’t much for erasing anyway. Sometimes your mistakes showed you the really interesting connections between your brain, your hand, and your heart, the ones you might otherwise never know were there. They were important even if you had no idea what they meant. Like now, for instance. Coming back here might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made. But it might also be the most important thing he’d ever done.

Didn’t he have to admit, begrudgingly, that in some extra-perverse corner of his brain the idea of having to be out of town before sundown appealed to him? New Orleans had been the only constant thing in his life. But didn’t he yet an itchy foot sometimes, didn’t he sometimes think about just throwing all his stuff in his car and going? Of course he did. Everybody did, even normal people, the ones with triple mortgages and orthodontists’ bills and responsibilities to everything except what they really wanted.

And that's another thing. What if I were to talk to Tanker, find out if he's happy at the Polonius Room, see if maybe he wants to come back? He was always such a key part of this kitchen." Rickey pointed a chocolate-smudged finger at Lenny. "Don't you dare. If I decide I want to talk to him, I'll talk to him. I told you, I don't need you handling my business for me." "I understand," Lenny said, making a mental note to call Tanker.

I carried my pint to a corner table and sat just looking at it for a moment: the head of foam, the tiny bubbles ascending through clear gold, the droplets condensing on the sides of the glass, then running down to form a wet circle on the beer mat. Reputations are ruined, marriages destroyed, lifes works forsaken for the beauty of such a sight. There are seven thousand pubs in London.

A heart like an artichoke?” “Oui. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.

Rickey sometimes wondered what would have become of them if the Peychaud crew hadn't imploded one night in a marathon of apocalyptic drunkenness. No one remembered much of this night, but by the end of it, two cars were totaled, the sous chef and the bartender were in Charity Hospital, the chef was in jail, and the grill guy's wife was filing for divorce. The owner decided to close the place and they found themselves jobless. Rickey guessed this kind of thing was known as a "wake-up call

in until ten, not even on Mardi Gras nights. No one except the girl in the black silk dress, the thin little girl with the short, soft dark hair that fell in a curtain across her eyes. Christian always wanted to brush it away from her face, to feel it trickle through his fingers like rain. Tonight, as usual, she slipped in at nine-thirty and looked around for the friends who were never there. The wind blew the French Quarter in behind her, the night air rippling warm down Chartres Street as it slipped away toward the river, smelling of spice and fried oysters and whiskey and the dust of ancient bones stolen and violated.

I’d say to myself, Andrew Compton, you’ve sucked their cold mouths and cocks; you’ve licked their blood from your hands by the bucketful; you’ve boiled the flesh off their skulls, then used the same pot to make curry. Why not just fry up a few tender bits and see what it’s like—perhaps with a nice egg?

Trevor cupped his hands around it, felt Zach's heartbeat throbbing between his palms. The skin of the shaft was textured, slightly rippled beneath the surface. The head was as smooth as satin, as rose petals. Trevor rubbed his thumb across it, squeezed gently, heard Zack suck air in through his teeth and moan as he let it out. He could see blood suffusing the tissue just beneath the translucent skin, a deep dusky rose delicately purpled at the edges, crowned with a single dewy pearl of come. It was as intimate, as raw as holding someone's heart in his hands.

So what do I do with the rest of my time? he thought. Live rent-free with my parents, write in my notebooks, go out dancing, catch a buzz, get laid? It doesn't sound so bad. But what if I only have, say, five more years to live?

My grandmother told me you shouldn’t try to define evil, that the minute you think you’ve got it all pinned down, a kind of evil you never even thought of will sneak up behind you and jump inside your head. I don’t think anyone knows what evil is. I don’t think anyone has the right to say.

A chiropractor is a doctor who performs adjustments on the spine," Rickey told the class before bending Gary backward and "adjusting" him, ripping off the false arm and spraying red hair dye all over the classroom. Gary howled in "pain" and collapsed dramatically on the threadbare school carpet, his legs flailing a bit before hitting the floor with a terrible, final-sounding thunk. That was the first time they were sent to the principal's office together. They had to apologize to their teacher and explain to their classmates that doctor visits were unlikely to result in surprise dismemberments.

Before August 29, 2005, “antediluvian” was simply a word to me, a pretty Biblical reference that had a nice ring to it but no real personal resonance for me. I vaguely understood that it connoted a state of innocence,

Atheists loved to use that term to describe some shadowy force that somehow controlled human destiny, but what the hell did they think the universe was?

what's the code for New Orleans? MSY? That doesn't make sense

Jay stopped and unlocked an iron gate with finals wrought in the shape of pineapples.

Magic happens when and where it wants to.

AS WE THINK, SO WE ARE;

They may hate us for sucking cock, but at least they can't accuse of making more little cocksuckers.

I'd like him to have a good life... but all I can wish him now is a decent death.

Help the ones you love, his grandmother had told him, help them when you can, and after that, mind your business. Your gift doesn’t give you the right to go rearranging other people’s lives for them. You might see their souls, but they won’t always want you to be their mirror.

Death doesn’t hurt,” said one of the twins, and a light came into his silver eyes. “Death is dark, death is sweet.” The other twin took up the litany. “Death is all that lasts forever. Death is eternal beauty.” “Death is a lover with a thousand tongues—” “A thousand insect caresses—” “Death is easy.

I am Nothing. He liked the name. It did not make him feel worthless; on the contrary, he began to think of himself as a blank slate upon which anything could be written. The words inscribed on his soul were up to him.

His face was a red slick, featureless, blind. He was nothing but particles now, if he had ever been anything more. I had only altered the speed at which his particles were vibrating. Nothing in the universe had been disturbed.

Rosalie lay awake late at night, alone in her unwomaned bed,

I'm Lush Rimbaud, and I refuse to shut up or die.

but they knew no better than to fortify their product with highly toxic oil of wormwood. Two of the kids had died after sampling their own product. The other two only suffered massive brain damage.

And what was I if not death’s ghostwriter?

knew how hungrily they would lap up the twin rivers of blood and milk.

I suspected later that I might actually saved lives by killing some of them.

Like someone trying to gargle boiling water.

Trevor slowed the car to a crawl, made sure Zach was breathing, speeded back up to twenty or so. If he rolled through stop signs, he could drive all the way to Kinsey’s house in second gear. It would be hell on the clutch,

There was a chill in the air, to be sure, a damp cool vapour drifting round corners and rising from drains. But I had just come from London, where November vapours were like ill-intentioned hands sliding beneath your collar to encircle your coat-chafed, chicken-skinned throat, where November winds cut more deeply than my stolen scalpel ever did.

I met his gaze steadily as I slammed his head into the wall, trying not to let my face contort, trying not to look angry or cruel. Most likely he was past the point of knowing anything. But if he could still see me, I wanted him to know I wasn't doing this because I hated him. Quite the contrary. Before, I had only seen him as a means to an end. But in these final moments of his life, I loved him.

Nothing gazed around at the kids in the club. They were all so beautiful. He loved their choppy hairstyles, their costume jewelry, their ragged black or multicolored clothes. He loved the way they all somehow looked like him, and he wished he could make friends with every one of them.

It was as if America had begun the decade of the eighties by shattering some great cosmic mirror, except that the seven years of bad luck hadn’t ended yet. The wizened, evil-faced dybbuk in the White House had been as alien a being as Trevor could imagine, a shriveled yet hideously animated puppet thrust into power by the same shadowy forces that had controlled the world since Trevor was five, forces he could not control, could barely see or begin to understand.

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about… the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard. Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"--with a lady.

Zillah took her arm and led her toward the van. Ann kept her arm squeezed against her body so that his fingers would come into contact with the sideswell of her breast. He didn’t move his hand away. Soon she felt his fingers begin to move, subtly caressing her, a forefinger darting out to graze her nipple. The nipple shivered erect,

They may hate us for sucking cock, but at least they can’t accuse us of making more little cocksuckers.

Any time someone is afraid of you, you can use it to your own advantage.

That chap looks as if he ate a girl's kidney last night.

All the stone and iron of Painswick Prison was nothing but vibrations. Had I known, I could have begun vibrating at a different frequency and gone right between the bars.

The rape and dismemberment of my immortal soul-though I deserved all that and more, I found that I could no longer bear the weight.

Rickey wondered briefly who they were before the lovely floaty feeling wiped away his curiosity. “You got a concussion and a broken ankle, but you’re gonna be fine.

She felt the electric thrill of contact, the very tip of his tongue touching hers, and an exquisite heat exploded from the center of her womb. For an instant she thought her innards would simply melt out of her pussy and run down her thighs, so intense was the rush.

La casa se alzaba ante ellos, suponiendo que «alzarse» no fuera excesivamente presuntuoso para una casita como aquella. Un postigo medio desprendido se inclinaba hacia el suelo sugiriendo el enarcamiento medio cínico de una ceja. Las ventanas eran ojos a medio cerrar llenos de inagotable buen humor. Aquella casa era buena.

Fantasma se preguntó qué se sentiría sabiendo que no envejecerías más, que ya no ibas a cambiar nunca más, que tu piel nunca se volvería delicada y llena de surcos y arrugas, que tu cabello nunca llegaría a ser blanco y frágil, que tus manos seguirían siendo lisas y fuertes. Se estremeció. No, mirarse al espejo cada día y ver el mismo rostro sin una sola huella de la pena y la risa de la vida reflejadas en él no le gustaría en lo más mínimo.

What are you doing?" "Killing you." A ghost of a smile touched his ips, but not his pale eyes. "Why?" "Because it's what we do. And because you're beautiful.

The thought that it was nearly over soothed him like a lover's touch.

He figured Lush Rimbaud was insane,

Jayne Mansfield had died out here on Chef Menteur Highway.

Birdland was a mirror. You could shatter it and cut yourself to ribbons on it, you could obscure it with blood. Or you could be brave enough to look into it with eyes wide open and see whatever there was to see.