|
4f61ccd
|
Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else. A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.
|
|
writing
mad-house
work-life-balance
career
writers
creativity
|
Richard Matheson |
|
d819dad
|
People are not punished for their deeds but by them
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
89029fa
|
And suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man. Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces -- awe, fear, shrinking horror -- and he knew that they afraid of him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible spectre who had lef..
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
3e52900
|
God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? ("Disappearing Act")"
|
|
writing
|
Richard Matheson |
|
25b6bac
|
To his complete astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second. Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted ..
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
c064b5c
|
Not that it was unjust; not that the scales were forced out of balance. Where there had been good, it showed as clearly. Kindnesses, accomplishments, all those were present, too.
|
|
life
|
Richard Matheson |
|
ef2fd31
|
For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
fdc6591
|
Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
54d563a
|
You can get used to horror, he thought. When it has lost immediacy and is no longer pungent and has become a steady diet. When it has degraded to a chain of mind-numbing events. ("Lover When You're Near Me")"
|
|
jaded
|
Richard Matheson |
|
0cc1101
|
He turned away from the bar as if he could leave the question there. But questions had no location; they could follow him around.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
0321649
|
The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
a8a08c4
|
I couldn't tell you, Robert, what the higher ramifications are of being soul mates. I can tell you this however. As long as you are separated from your own, that long are you troubled. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how exquisite the environment in which you find yourself. To be half
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
be2eb51
|
Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. ("Death Ship")"
|
|
precognition
dying
|
Richard Matheson |
|
a3096ff
|
I don the robe of hermit without a cry.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
11328e5
|
Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that? Thirty, maybe forty if he didn't drink himself to death. The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
71c9e1a
|
Crossing your fingers, Neville? Knocking on wood? He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien. Once he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Makes a good excuse, doesn't it, Neville? Oh, shut up.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
afb5774
|
I wish I were a boy again-unquestioning, with no need to analyze the moment.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
0a08912
|
He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into that hideous coma, to sink then into death and, perhaps, return to sterile, awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved. That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.
|
|
love
vampire
|
Richard Matheson |
|
ed6c966
|
God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. ("Mad House")"
|
|
writing
writers
creativity
|
Richard Matheson |
|
5ead9b4
|
Everything is mental,
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
756e143
|
Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he'd been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
6bda850
|
If you only knew the beauty which awaits you, Daniel. If you only knew how lovely are the realms which lie beyond this house. Would you keep yourself locked in a barren cell when all the beauties of the universe await you on the outside?
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
7576d50
|
For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
86a5dd9
|
Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliche from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones - Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her a..
|
|
writing
|
Richard Matheson |
|
c370780
|
In less than an hour I have to hold class for a group of idiot freshmen. And, on a desk in the living room, is a mountain of midterm examinations with essays I must suffer through, feeling my stomach turn at their paucity of intelligence, their adolescent phraseology. And all that tripe, all those miles of hideous prose, had been would into an eternal skein in his head. And there it sat unraveling into his own writing until he wondered if h..
|
|
writing
|
Richard Matheson |
|
88c5b03
|
How shall I typify what happened? Passion play? Somewhat. Weird tale? Indubitably. Horror story? Pretty close. Grotesque melodrama? Certainly. Black comedy? Your point of view will determine that. Perhaps it was a combination of them all... So, to the story. A chronicle of greed and cruelty, horror and rapacity, sadism and murder. Love, American style.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
9e09076
|
No, by God, he had no intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless, fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
b64b6d0
|
A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliche.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
2c36213
|
Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her? His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.
|
|
murder
death
change
hope
murderer
decision
zombies
dead
|
Richard Matheson |
|
294d71b
|
The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on himself.
|
|
survival
|
Richard Matheson |
|
c480500
|
Yet, despite all, it is a difficult thing to admit the existence of ghosts in a coldly factual world. One's very instincts rebel at the admission of such maddening possibility. For, once the initial step is made into the supernatural, there is no turning back, no knowing where the strange road leads except that it is quite unknown and quite terrible. ("Slaughter House")"
|
|
horror
supernatural
|
Richard Matheson |
|
2bfdd3c
|
I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
7cdeb19
|
But it's so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
4a83aec
|
Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
c6fa9ce
|
It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in. That's the time to get them. ("The Disinheritors")"
|
|
reality
imagination
unreality
rationality
|
Richard Matheson |
|
f7f1620
|
It's horrible," she said. He looked at her in surprise. Horrible? Wasn't that odd? He hadn't thought that for years. For him the word "horror" had become obsolete. A surfeiting of terror made terror a cliche. To Robert Neville the situation merely existed as natural fact. It had no adjectives."
|
|
normalcy
terror
legend
|
Richard Matheson |
|
cd50bb9
|
Patience, he told himself. Get yourself at least one virtue, anyway.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
bdbcaeb
|
She sounded angry. That was the way she'd been as long as he'd known her. If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She seemed to regard it as a personal affront.
|
|
illness
irritation
sickness
|
Richard Matheson |
|
a9887f4
|
It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishi..
|
|
metaphor
library
books
death
apocalypse
decay
empty
zombies
dead
|
Richard Matheson |
|
a8227a8
|
Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from "The Conqueror")"
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
8c4b220
|
What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross? The
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
d3c1db3
|
Staring down at the brook, I remembered a stream near Mammoth Lake. We'd parked the camper just above it and, all night, listened to it splashing across rocks and stones; a lovely sound.
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
9a888e7
|
The cross. He held one in his hand, gold and shiny in the morning sun. This, too, drove the vampires away. Why? Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?
|
|
|
Richard Matheson |
|
5ddc8cd
|
Again he shook his head. The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!
|
|
humour
death
change
corpses
normality
undead
usual
zombies
dead
|
Richard Matheson |