A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.

Ghost stories ... tell us about things that lie hidden within all of us, and which lurk outside all around us.

I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.

I'm really quite hard to scare so it was about mining times when I have jumped, and what creeps me out.

Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.

The key word for my book The Woman in Black is unsettling... because you're not terrified all of the time or even frightened, but you're unsettled and once you're unsettled, then the door's open.

I like going into a school matinee. I like to be behind the stage because there's a spy-hole and what you see is the best moment in all theatre.

I collect Victorian automata and coming across them in the dark does give you a little shudder.

I had changed, and gone on changing, but I did not fully remember how it had begun, or understand why.

I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad."“Yes, ” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

do something good...rape your self before your lifes next attempt....!

To be busy minding other people's business, is to leave one's personal business unattended to.

I am going to be murdered.It wasn’t any easier to face in the daytime.

I despise all adjectives that try to describe people as liberal or conservative, rightist or leftist, as long as they stay in the useful part of the road.

Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph.

There is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good.

Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on.

Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.

A good friend will help you move. But best friend will help you move a dead body.