“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Will looked horrified. "What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“The real world is where the monsters are.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
“Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
― Stephen King, The Shining
“There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win.”
― George R. R. Martin
“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi
“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog
“But these words people threw around - humans, monsters, heroes, villains - to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― V.E. Schwab, Vicious
“Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.”
― Rick Riordan
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello
“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire
“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida
“Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters
“There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.”
― Victoria Schwab, Our Dark Duet
“But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
“We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity
“Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.”
― Sue Grafton, I is for Innocent
“A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling
“Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”
― Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“But what if the monsters come?"
"Fancy." Kit looked away from the drama to stare at her sister, surprised. "We are the monsters.”
― Dia Reeves, Slice of Cherry
“Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again.”
― David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
“A monster. You and your friends, all of you. Pretty monsters. It's a stage all girls go through. If you're lucky you get through it without doing any permanent damage to yourself or anyone else.”
― Kelly Link
“The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous”
― John le Carré
“I love zombies. If any monster could Riverdance, it would be zombies.”
― Craig Ferguson
“She was a monster, but she was my monster.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
“... not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
“It's poor judgment', said Grandpa 'to call anything by a name. We don't know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can't heave them into categories with labels and say they'll act one way or another. That'd be silly. They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it. People who *do* things.”
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country
“Monsters don’t get happy endings.”
― Paula Stokes, Ferocious
“The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters." —Alice Healy”
― Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon
“Be careful in the company of monsters that you don't become one.”
― Cindy Gerard, Take No Prisoners
“But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“She is so lovely she could kill you without you even noticing it. A monster girl who knows when to kiss and when to kill.”
― Cameron Jace, Snow White Sorrow
“Are you sure this isn't a nightmare? And that we won't just wake up?
Yes. Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In The Afterlight
“Monsters are easy, Miss Rook. They're monsters. But a monster in a suit? That's basically just a wicked man, and a wicked man is a more dangerous thing by far.”
― William Ritter, Jackaby
“That was the thing to remember about all monsters, They love to frighten
people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run.”
― Jeanette Walls
“Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.”
― Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“That's the beautiful thing about innocence; even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with.”
― Dave Matthes, Sleepeth Not, the Bastard
“The monsters are gone."
"Really?" Doubtful.
"I killed the monsters. That's what fathers do.”
― F K Wallace
“Everyone carries around his own monsters.---Richard Pryor”
― Jonathan Maberry, Rot & Ruin
“Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they're real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster. ~Bibiana to Anita”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Bullet
“… we have bad dreams
because our brain is trying to protect us… If we can figure out a way to beat the imaginary monsters … Then the real monsters don’t seem so scary… That’s why we like reading scary stories.”
― Dan Poblocki, The Stone Child
“Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist
“CONTROL MYSELF?!! I'm a MONSTER! Monsters don't control themselves! That's the whole IDEA!”
― Jeff Smith, Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw Master of the Eastern Border
“*For eleven years, I've been worked over and abused in ways you can't imagine by things you don't want to know about. I've killed every kind of vile, black-souled, dead-eyed nightmare that ever made you piss your pjs and cry for mommy in the middle of the night. I kill monsters and, if I wanted, I could say a word and burn you to powder from the inside out. I can tear any human you ever met to rages with my bare hands. Give me one good reason why I could possibly need you?
*She looks straight at me, not blinking. No fear in her eyes.
*Because you might be the Tasmanian Devil and the Angel of Death all rolled into one, but you don't even know how to get a phone.
*I hate to admit it, but she has a point.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim
“Rafael?”
”Yeah?”
„Do we all have monsters?”
„Yes.”
„Why does God give us so many monsters?”
„You want to know my theory?”
„Sure.”
„I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
“You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Thousandth Night / Minla's Flowers
“I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“Unhappiness slowly creeps up on you, like a shape-shifting monster waiting in the darkness of your hallway, his bulging eyes watching your every move. The breath on his slimy tongue makes the hairs on your neck stand up.”
― Kate Rockland, Falling Is Like This
“One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
“...no good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
“The less you knew, the fewer monsters you’d attract,”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
“Even monsters are beautiful.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Wake
“Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.”
― Guillermo Del Toro, The Monsters Of Hellboy II
“I ignored him, concentrating on Lilith. "According to the stories, after you were expelled from Eden you went down into Hell, where you coupled with demons and gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued the world."
"I was young," said Lilith. "You know how it is. We all do things we later regret, when we're being rebellious teenagers.”
― Simon R. Green, Hex and the City
“Real life... Witches: Wiccan practitioners. Werewolves: rare strain of rabies. Zombies: Prions/Plague. Vampires: Hemophilia/Porphyria”
― Solange nicole
“...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad
“Not all the monsters have fangs.”
― J. A. London
“Lucius didn’t believe in werewolves. He said that people were too horrible for any other monsters to exist, which he thought was a shame.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Human Detritus
“The monsters in our valley were destroyed that day. Only a very few survived. But that was all right, because we didn't need monsters anymore. We had become them.”
― K.A. Applegate
“This inhuman place makes human monsters”
― Stephen King
“No one's the monster in their own story. Monsters are just a matter of perspective.”
― C.A. Fletcher, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World
“But I don’t think fighting monsters is all that courageous. I think the ultimate act of courage is standing still in the face of a monster. Courage is looking closely enough into its jaws to see it for what it is: an illusion. The monster isn’t real. It’s your fear of the monster that is real. And just about anything in life can look like a monster if the light is just right.”
― Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen
“Perhaps the monsters of myth and legend are merely tormented diseased souls that were maltreated because of unseen forces we did not understand and labelled ignorantly and incorrectly out of fear and self-righteousness.”
― L.B. Ó Ceallaigh, Revenants, Retroviruses, and Religion: How Viruses and Disease Created Cultural Mythology and Shaped Religious Perspectives
“I was the hunter when the world was dark. When you could smell the men, the food, the unwashed bodies for miles. There was no challenge to finding them, alone in a wood, hunting their own quarry. Their flesh and sweat teasing our nostrils in the dusk. They were easy prey.”
― Laura Diaz de Arce, Monstrosity: Large Print Edition
“Monsters know when they are recognized, just as bores do.”
― Thomas Harris, Cari Mora: from the creator of Hannibal Lecter
“If a point of view becomes one’s entire identity, what was monstrous on the inside can become monstrous on the outside.”
― Joseph Fink, Alice Isn't Dead
“-Dream up something wild and improbable. Something beautiful and full of monsters.
-Beautiful and full of monsters?
-All the best stories are.”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
“That reminds me why I gave up Dungeons and Dragons. There were too many monsters. Back in the old days you could go around a dungeon without meeting much more than a few orcs and lizard men, but then everyone started inventing monsters and pretty soon it was a case of bugger the magic sword, what you really need to be the complete adventurer was the Marcus L. Rowland fifteen-volume guide to Monsters and the ability to read very, very fast, because if you couldn’t recognize them from the outside you pretty soon got the chance to try looking at them from the wrong side of their tonsils.”
― Terry Pratchett, Alien Christmas
Kayla Krantz
“No use in fearing the monsters under your bed when you've become them.”
― Kayla Krantz, Blood Moon
“Hermes made it sound pretty ridiculous—hordes of monsters going up in the elevator twenty at a time, listening to “Stayin’ Alive.”
― Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian
“Iapetus shall crush you!” one shouted. “Who?” I asked. Then I ran her through with my sword. Note to self: If you vaporize monsters, they can’t answer your questions.”
― Rick Riordan, The Demigod Files
“It is healthy and wise to believe there exist goodness in humans, it is equally healthy and wise to realize there are monsters in the world pretending to be humans, and these monsters have pretended for so long, they actually believe they are human.
Some times it is difficult to distinguish the difference.”
― Brien Pittman
“A monster does not recognize himself in a mirror”
― Mike Klepper
“Are you kidding? If you want to know about fighting monsters, a six-year old is exactly who you ask.”
― Greg Chivers, The Crying Machine
“The most gentle creatures in the world, are sometimes the most feared”
― Dean Mackin
Brandon Sanderson
“And so, untold millions screamed out in pain, and then were suddenly silenced. I hope you're happy.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
“Women and monsters have a lot in common [...]. They are both outcasts; alienated, derided and feared by society. They are biological freaks with bodies that transgress and fluctuate, and they are both threats to male power.”
― Ellie Wriglesworth
“Horrific many eyed, many winged angels, undead zombies and vampires are part of our cultures. Witches, warlocks, and demons as well. [...] In many cases what has given birth to some of them may never be known, but perhaps it is because we are not looking in the right places.”
― L.B. Ó Ceallaigh, Revenants, Retroviruses, and Religion: How Viruses and Disease Created Cultural Mythology and Shaped Religious Perspectives
“I won't lie and say my kind are never monstrous. Just that we're only as monstrous as your kind are.”
― Kara Barbieri, White Stag
“The monster is bigger than the human. It represents abundance—overabundance. ... It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is too many and too much.”
― Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“I am,’ he whispers, 'the monster I warned you against.’
'You are,’ I say hoarsely, 'the monster I claim.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong
“But those who caged her in order to protect her from monsters, didn’t notice that they are making a monster out of her too….”
― Samiha Totanji
“This is a house full of misfits, everyone unmoored from the world outside these gates. They don’t belong out there. They live in a constantly moving dreamworld of imagined horrors, spurts of gore, skulking monsters---creatures more aberrant than themselves. After all, it takes true misfits to make believable monsters.”
― Derek Milman, Scream All Night
“Most people feared the darkness. Some people feared, more wisely, the things within the darkness.
Gabriel feared both, and with good reason. He walked anyway. That had always been his way. He had a complicated history with the woodlands of the world. He'd met his share of the Cyclops and the Circes that lurked within.
And the world never seemed to run out of monsters.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up
“He looks like the bloke next door, was Sparks's first thought. But then, monsters rarely look the part. You hope you'll be able to see the evil shining out of them. It would make police work a damn sight easier, he often said. But evil was a slippery substance, glimpsed only occasionally, and all the more horrifying for that, he knew.”
― Fiona Barton, The Widow
“Madness is in the mind of the beholder.”
― Boris Lee, The Shadows of Insanity
“I had managed to scare even the monsters, and when you can scare monsters, you can be sure you've become one yourself.”
― Alan Gratz, Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II
“As a little girl I was scared of monsters. My parents told me they didn't exist. How I wish they would have told me the whole truth. Monsters do exist; they're just not hiding in closets.”
― Leah Darrow, The Other Side of Beauty: Embracing God's Vision for Love and True Worth
“Sometimes murderers just do not murder the right person, which is a shame...”
― Emerald Fennell, Monsters
“Why do you call him a monster?”
“Well, an eight-foot tall green gorilla with web feet and bug eyes—what would you call him? A well-developed frog? Not exactly an Ivy-league type, anyway.’”
“I’ve met plenty of Ivy-leaguers I’d call monsters.”
― Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban
“Monsters are more dangerous when they're afraid.”
― Victoria Aveyard, King's Cage
“This is how it should end. They won't remember the way I died, but they'll remember how I lived, forever. I was the monster under your bed, wasn't I? I'll be the monster waiting for your children.”
― Seanan McGuire, Late Eclipses
“Man should be better than monsters.
Ah, but who are the monsters?”
― Guillermo del Toro
“We live, if we still do live, in a Sea of Chaos, out of which any fucking monster can evolve.”
― Stephen Jones, Zombie Apocalypse!
“She finally understood why the monsters in the Forest always seemed to smile. Beasts only bared their teeth as a warning before they attack.”
― Emory R. Frie, Enchanted Forest
“The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“After all, in this world of humans, he was little better than a monster, and what did a monster have to be afraid of in the dark?”
― Darren Shan, Ocean of Blood
“Never be decieved by exterior decorations, some monsters go about on suit and tie and of course a Bible.”
― Paul Bamikole
“He leaned towards me, and I did what any reasonable person would do when facing imminent death by being eaten alive. I screamed.”
― Donald G. Firesmith, Demons on the Dalton
“Monsters were real. They wore human flesh and looked out from behind the eyes of seemingly benign people. You passed them on the street every day, never knowing they'd marked you as prey until it was too late.”
― Liana LeFey, Once a Courtesan
“When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“Too often people mistake monsters for gods.”
― Monique Snyman, Muti Nation
“Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.”
― Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
“I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.”
― Leslye Walton, A Tyranny of Petticoats
“Oh sure, everyone else charges monsters and it's brave, I do it once and I'm a madman.”
― Drew Hayes, NPCs
“The more monsterous humanity gets, the more nicer monsters become”
― Anonymous
“You don't get to become someone's hero unless you are already another's monster.”
― Adhish Mazumder
“But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruelest way to kill a monster.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching
“Demons are a very human creation. You look for ways to explain evil, and instead of seeing it in yourselves, you offload the responsibility onto monsters. The monstrous exists in the mirror, not in the sulfurous depths of some fantasy world.”
― Kelley Armstrong, Deceptions
“She hated seeing monsters smile. Monsters should growl and snarl and be done with the pretenses.”
― Faith McKay, Prophecy Girl
“Only monsters could slay monsters.”
― Imraan Coovadia, Tales of the Metric System
“The doors of Hell are never bolted or barred, to those who belong there.”
― Simon R. Green, Mean Streets
“I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.”
― Teju Cole, Open City
“She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me.”
― Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“Monsters are very real. But they're not just creatures. Monsters are everywhere. They're people. They're nightmares...They are the things that we harbor within ourselves. If you remember one thing, even above remembering me, remember that there is not a monster dreamt that hasn't walked once within the soul of a man.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows
“Even monsters need to rest between monstrosities.”
― Michael Rowe, Enter, Night
“Art, like Nature, has her monsters”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“We are a race prone to monsters, she thought, and when we produce one we worship it.”
― Iain M. Banks, Against a Dark Background
“A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.”
― Colson Whitehead
“Can you imagine life without the horror genre? There would be no monsters. Only a**holes.”
― Michael A. Arnzen