“And when he had crossed the bridge, the phantoms came to meet him.”
— Bram Stoker
“preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place.”
— Bram Stoker
“Are we to have nothing tonight?” said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror. But as I looked, they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag.”
— Bram Stoker
“If that other fellow doesn’t know his happiness, well, he’d better look for it soon, or he’ll have to deal with me.”
— Bram Stoker
“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.”
— Bram Stoker
“I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.”
— Bram Stoker
“Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad – when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where I was, alone – unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.(Dracula’s Guest)”
— Bram Stoker
“It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end. Everything that one does seems, no matter how right it may be, to bring on the very thing which is most to be deplored.”
— Bram Stoker
“I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success.”
— Bram Stoker
“It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.”
— Bram Stoker
“. . . a wind howling began, which seemed to form all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night.”
— Bram Stoker
“Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh.”
— Bram Stoker
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
— Bram Stoker
“Faith, that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.”
— Bram Stoker
“Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”
— Bram Stoker
“Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.”
— Bram Stoker
“for I determined that if Death came he should find me ready”
— Bram Stoker
“I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.”
— Bram Stoker
“What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed.”
— Bram Stoker
“It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.”
— Bram Stoker
“Some of the ‘New Women’ writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won’t condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too!”
— Bram Stoker
“There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned. On it was but one word, DRACULA.”
— Bram Stoker
“I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths.”
— Bram Stoker
“Euthanasia” is an excellent and comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.”
— Bram Stoker
“But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more strong together.”
— Bram Stoker
“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”
— Bram Stoker
“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer–both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”
— Bram Stoker
“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”
— Bram Stoker
“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
— Bram Stoker
“There is a reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.”
— Bram Stoker