Sometimes, we all need a little wisdom to get us through the dark times (or the uncomfortably bright and sunny times, as the case may be). Whatever you’re feeling–whether it’s spooky vibes or existential angst–chances are it’s been expressed by a gothic forebear.
Here are some classic goth quotes from pop culture and gothic literature to bring life to your inner creature of the night:
Gothic Movie Quotes
“Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I, myself, am strange and unusual.”
Lydia Deetz, in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice
“We all go a little mad sometimes.”
Norman Bates, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
“When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
George A. Romero, Dawn of the Dead
“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”
Black Philip, in Robert Eggers’ The Witch
“Never look back. The past is a wilderness of horrors.”
Sir John Talbot, The Wolfman (2010)
“Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see.”
Weir, Event Horizon (1997)
“We have such sights to show you.”
Pinhead, in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser
“I am a rumor. It is a blessed condition, believe me. To be whispered about at street corners. To live in other people’s dreams, but not to have to be."
The Candyman, in Bill Condon’s Candyman
Gothic Literature Quotes
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
“Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“I can’t help being a gorgeous fiend. It’s just the card I drew.”
Lestat, in The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death.”
John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
Charles Baudelaire
“Everybody is a book of blood. Wherever we’re opened, we’re red.”
Clive Barker, Books of Blood
“My mother used to say to me that she collected sorrows and put them in her pocket. Walking around with them that way, by and by, you just learn to carry them all a bit better, to stand up a bit straighter. That’s all life is, on this earth anyway.”
Tananarive Due
“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.”
Charles Baudelaire
“All earth was but one thought—and that was death”
Lord Byron, “Darkness”
"Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”
Dante Alighieri, Inferno
“The beautiful is always bizarre.”
Charles Baudelaire
“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
“Silence lay heavily upon the wood and the stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
“I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
Franz Kafka, from “The Metamorphosis”
“In order for a phoenix to rise from the ashes, it must first burn.”
Octavia Butler
“She had opened a door... and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge... Pain had made a sadist of her.”
Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
The monster, in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed.”
From The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
“I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, because it is mine. My own country. Night.”
John Fowles, The Magus
Goth Love Quotes
“It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him.”
Anne Rice, from Interview with the Vampire
“You are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.”
Franz Kafka, from Letters to Milena
“To die as lovers may--to die together, so that they may live together.”
Sheridan Le Fanu, from Carmilla
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes”
Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty”
“I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”
Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“To love me, you must also love the dark.”
Alix Klingenberg
“My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!”
Lord Byron, “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year”
“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
“My wild heart bleeds with yours.”
Sheridan Le Fanu, from Carmilla
Funny Dark Quotes
“And our credo: ‘Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.’
‘We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.’ Not just pretty words.”
Morticia Addams, from The Addams Family
“I never drink…wine.”
Dracula, in Dracula (1931)
“I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss.”
Gomez Addams, from The Addams Family
“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”
Pinhead, from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser
“I go for a look which I call dead but delicious.”
Vladislav, in Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows
“Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent.”
Lord Summerisle, in The Wicker Man (1973)
“One thing about living in Santa Carla I could never stomach, all the damn vampires!”
Grandpa, The Lost Boys (1987)
“I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner.”
Hannibal Lecter, in The Silence of the Lambs
Dark Shakespeare Quotes
“Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Hell is empty. All the devils are here.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look upon.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.”
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
"There's daggers in men's smiles."
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth