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Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us. -- Richard Matheson
Goddamn your bones, that is the first step. -- Richard Matheson
But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them twitching emphatically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the dog's head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog. -- Richard Matheson
Chris:I forgive you.
Annie: For killing my children and my sweet husband?
Chris: For being so wonderful a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be around you.
-- Richard Matheson
What dreams you white-frocked kiddies have in the sanctified cloister of your laboratories. You can make yourself believe anything after a while. As long as you can make up a measurement for it. -- Richard Matheson
It was more than a spider. It was every unknown terror in the world fused into wriggling, poison-jawed horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form. -- Richard Matheson
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") -- Richard Matheson
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. -- Richard Matheson
... Those who've marred their appearance in any way by their actions in life aren't forced to witness that marring. If they were, they'd become self-conscious and be unable to concentrate on improving themselves. -- Richard Matheson
The last man in the world was irretrievably stuck with his delusions. -- Richard Matheson
That's what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed. -- Richard Matheson
Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is. -- Richard Matheson
I stood there feeling nowhere. -- Richard Matheson
(After death.) So few people who come across, possess awareness of any kind. All they bring along with them are worthless values. All they desire is continuation of what they had in life no matter how misguided or degraded ... Will those people ever progress, even with our help? -- Richard Matheson
Miniture protoplasm, the dirty little bastard! -- Richard Matheson
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 perishing. -- Richard Matheson
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
If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease ... Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives. -- Richard Matheson
There was no sound but that of his shoes and the now senseless singing of birds. Once I thought they sang because everything was right with the world, Robert Neville thought. I know now I was wrong. They sing because they're feeble minded. -- Richard Matheson
You bastard, he thought, almost affectionately, watching the minuscule protoplasm fluttering on the slide. You dirty little bastard. -- Richard Matheson
I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didn't write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges. -- Richard Matheson
On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back. -- Richard Matheson
Perhaps jungle life, despite physical danger, was a relaxing one. Surely it was free of the petty grievances, the disparate values of society. It was simple, devoid of artifice and ulcer-burning pressures. -- Richard Matheson
But now, in the final hours, even hope had vanished. Yet he could smile. At a point without hope he had found contentment. He knew he had tried and there was nothing to be sorry for. And this was complete victory, because it was a victory over himself. -- Richard Matheson
There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity. -- Richard Matheson
Thank you ... for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence. -- Richard Matheson
... 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. -- Richard Matheson
Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own encroachments? -- Richard Matheson
'I Am Legend' is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from. -- Richard Matheson
And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything. -- Richard Matheson
Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend. -- Richard Matheson
In a world of monotonous horror
there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. -- Richard Matheson
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
That wind of terrible and jealous beauty blowing over me - that dark fire, that music ... -- Richard Matheson
Here we are, kiddies, sitting like a bug in a rug, snugly, surrounded by a battalion of bloodsuckers who wish no more than to sip freely of my bonded, 100 proof hemoglobin. Have a drink, men, this one's really on me. -- Richard Matheson
People are not punished for their deeds but by them -- Richard Matheson
Somewhere In Time is the story of a love which transcends time , What Dreams May Come is the story of a love which transcends death ... I feel that they represent the best writing I have done in the novel form. -- Richard Matheson
I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. ("Advance Notice") -- Richard Matheson
All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth. -- Richard Matheson
I think What Dreams May Come is the most important (read effective) book I've written. It has caused a number of readers to lose their fear of death the finest tribute any writer could receive ... Somewhere In Time is my favorite novel. -- Richard Matheson
Come out, Neville. -- Richard Matheson
If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction ... Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person. -- Richard Matheson
When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor. -- Richard Matheson
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. -- Richard Matheson
Desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. -- Richard Matheson
When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn't it? -- Richard Matheson
I can get pissed off very easily. -- Richard Matheson
Heaven would never be heaven without you. -- Richard Matheson
It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements. -- Richard Matheson
I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening to them in the neighborhood. -- Richard Matheson
Really now, search your soul, lovie-is the vampire so bad?
All he does is drink blood. -- Richard Matheson
To look at the entire journey all at once was stupidity. You thought of it in segments; that was the only way. -- Richard Matheson
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
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") -- Richard Matheson
He forgot everything, time and place; it was just the two of them together, needing each other, survivors of a black terror embracing because they had found each other. -- Richard Matheson
A man could get used to anything if he had to. -- Richard Matheson
Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from "The Conqueror") -- Richard Matheson
The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him. -- Richard Matheson
Patience, he told himself. Get yourself at least one virtue, anyway. -- Richard Matheson
Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. ("Death Ship") -- Richard Matheson
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") -- Richard Matheson
How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough. -- Richard Matheson
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. -- Richard Matheson
Now when I die, I shall only be dead. -- Richard Matheson
If I could die now, he thought; peacefully, gently, without a tremor or a crying out. If I could be with her. If I could believe I would be with her. His -- Richard Matheson
After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge. -- Richard Matheson
As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide. -- Richard Matheson
No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death. -- Richard Matheson
What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one's own, when self-pretense is no longer possible? -- Richard Matheson
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
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
I felt puny and absurd, a ludicrous midget. Easy enough to talk of soul and spirit and essential worth, but not when you're three feet tall. -- Richard Matheson
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
The day the library was shut down, he thought, some maiden librarian had moved down the room, pushing each chair against its table. Carefully, with a plodding precision that was the cachet of herself. -- Richard Matheson
In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins. -- Richard Matheson
The red hands had stopped at four-twenty-seven. He wondered what day they had stopped. As he descended the stairs with his armful of books, he wondered at just what moment the clock stopped. Had it been morning or night? Was it raining or shining? Was anyone there when it stopped? -- Richard Matheson
Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction. -- Richard Matheson
I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field. -- Richard Matheson
For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete. -- Richard Matheson
The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told. -- Richard Matheson
Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled. -- Richard Matheson
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
Everything is mental, -- Richard Matheson
Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn't. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment. -- Richard Matheson
From that day on he learned to accept the
dungeon he existed in, neither seeking to escape with sudden derring-do nor beating his pate
bloody on its walls.
And, thus resigned, he returned to work. -- Richard Matheson
Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Makes -- Richard Matheson
I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I've inspired a few people one way or another. -- Richard Matheson
Let this hell be our heaven. -- Richard Matheson
The keynote of minority prejudice is this: They are loathed because they are feared. -- Richard Matheson
For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him. -- Richard Matheson
This, he knew, was courage, the truest, ultimate courage, because there was no one here to sympathize or praise him for it. What he felt was felt without the hope of commendation. -- Richard Matheson
Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible. -- Richard Matheson
I wish I were a boy again-unquestioning, with no need to analyze the moment. -- Richard Matheson
Well, why not? Why not go out? It was a sure way to be free of them. -- Richard Matheson
But it's so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated. -- Richard Matheson
I hate it when something I've had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I've written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels. -- Richard Matheson
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet. -- Richard Matheson
Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man. -- Richard Matheson
Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope. -- Richard Matheson
How
long did it take for a past to die? -- Richard Matheson
Quiet is here and all in me. ("Dress of White Silk") -- Richard Matheson
She doesn't have to even give me supper. Im not hungry anyway.
Im full. (Dress of White Silk) -- Richard Matheson
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
What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross? -- Richard Matheson
Fresh air, quiet, and the calming stimulus of the movement on the earth beneath the sky; that's why she loves to walk so much. -- Richard Matheson
They won't accept reasonable things with their minds but the fantastic things they'll swallow whole when their emotions are brought into play. Because the emotions have no limits on belief. The emotions will swallow anything - and they do. -- Richard Matheson
That which you believe becomes your world. -- Richard Matheson
I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal. -- Richard Matheson
I don the robe of hermit without a cry. -- Richard Matheson