Best 41 quotes of Alistair Cross on MyQuotes

Animal violence. Child abuse. The devil made me do it. Senseless blood-spatter. Torture porn. These things can incite powerful reader response – but it isn’t the kind of response I want.

Any writer of horror needs to at least have a good, solid love of the genre. Also, good horror writers need to have a slightly twisted sense of humor. Without humor, horror just isn’t as good.

As a writer, you’ll be told all kinds of things about your work – some of it will make you feel like a king, some of it will break your heart, and some of it will set your blood on fire – but the important thing is to do the work and to dare to demand that the world allow you to be a writer.

As someone who could have just as easily spent my life punching a time clock, I feel very strongly about identifying and utilizing your natural-born talents.

Deadlines help me, but my muse hates them. My muse functions in fits and starts, and tends to take very long vacations. Deadlines are like a hot poker to his ass. They force us both to sit down and write, which is what it takes to do this.

Death. We accept that it's going to happen, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Do what you love. Use the talents you were given. When you begin your journey as a writer, you’ll be told that you can’t, that you won’t, that you mustn’t. But look closely at the lives of those who are discouraging you and ask yourself if this is someone you should be taking advice from.

Finishing the next book is what I live for – it’s my drug of choice, and it’s what compels me to keep chasing the dream.

Good horror is written by people who understand that fear is one of the cardinal passageways into the core of humanity. Good horror is generally written by folks who grew up on horror; books, movies, etc. You can’t simply decide to write—in any genre—if you don’t first have an understanding of the topic and a strong mental backlog of reference.

Gretchen VanTreese (from The Crimson Corset) is easily the most heartless character I’ve ever written. Ruthless, self-obsessed, and ambitious beyond her means, she is the epitome of greed and overindulgence. This is woman who keeps handsome young men as pets, a staff of venom-addicted employees to do her daytime bidding, and a basement full of bound human delicacies.

Horror demands answers to the deeper questions; it requires the contemplation of life and death and the examination of good and evil. I know of no other fictional genre that puts morality as front and center as horror does.

I always feel like I should have really interesting answers to questions about my writing process -and one day I’ll make something up involving goat bones and virgin’s blood – but the truth is, I get up, make coffee, I sit down, and I start writing.

I'd like to be a handsome corpse. At my funeral, I'd like people to look in my coffin and say, "Wow. He's so handsome when he's dead!" I guess it'd be kind of okay, too, if they made my books required reading in schools or something, but as far as leaving a legacy goes, I just want to be the hottest cadaver in the graveyard.

I'd like to be a handsome corpse. At my funeral, I'd like people to look in my coffin and say, "Wow. He's so handsome when he's dead!" I guess it'd be kind of okay, too, if they made my books required reading in schools or something, but mostly, I just want to be the hottest cadaver in the graveyard.

I firmly believe that writers must take full accountability for their careers. It’s a business, and part of business is marketing. You wouldn’t slap an OPEN sign on the window of your new barber shop, go home, and wait for the money to start rolling in.

If I've learned anything in this life, it's that dreams do not simply "come" true. Dreams are given slow, painful birth to after hours, days, weeks, months, and years of very hard labor.

I grew up in a spooky little town in a house with a spooky little basement, so the sensation of uneasy trepidation is home for me; it takes me back to boyhood.

I haven't noticed that horror gets any less respect than most fictional genres. Many of the most notable classics (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe) are horror. Even Dickens' A Christmas Carol, one of the most famous and most celebrated stories of all time is, at its core, a horror story with all of its ghosts, hauntings, and macabre imagery. So horror, from my experience, gets its fair share of respect.

I'm more interested in the mystery - the quiet horror. Personally, I'm far more intrigued by the creak of the floorboard than the ax-weilding madman.

I never considered myself a horror author until I got published and the powers that be told me that's what I was. I just write and don't concern myself with what category the publishers and bookstores decide to sell my books in.

I tend to be a little - just a little - more heavy-handed with the sex scenes, and Tamara (Thorne) tends slightly more toward humor. But the joy of it is, when we write together, it draws out the best in both of us.

I think erotica goes nicely with horror, and so do romance and history - but to be honest, if it's got horror, I'm happy!

I think horror, when done well, is one of the most direct and honest ways to get to the core of the human experience because terror reduces all of us to our most authentic forms.

I think I had two choices: I could either work a nine-to-five job and just get by until I retired, or I could write. There isn’t anything else I’m passionate about enough to put this much work into.

I think it’s important to present yourself as a professional. While writing a good book is critical, nothing will cancel that out faster than behaving like an amateur. I cringe every time I see an author arguing with a reader who left a poor review, or fighting with their friends on Facebook … or publicly bashing their agents or publishers.

I've always thought the best way to promote a book is to write a damned good one. If it's good enough, people will talk about it and do a large part of the marketing for you.

I've loved Anne Rice's books all my life and being able to talk with her was surreal. It was the only time I've ever been truly starstruck.

Most of all, kink comes up in my writing because that is, very simply, just the way the cat o’ nine tails flails. Any writer knows that there isn’t always an explanation for the behaviors of his or her characters and the subjects of his or her storylines. For whatever reason, kink just kind of comes out of me.

Sandy’s was one of those places that made poor, white trash feel like high-class consumers. This was the kind of place you’d take your mistress to, but never your wife. Wives expected better. Mistresses were impressed by the blandness of the over-priced wine and the vast Italian menu options.

Self-confidence is usually little more than wishful thinking in a thigh-high pair of Come F*ck Me boots.

That's how stories are born - mysterious noises, creaks on the stairs, bumps in the night, and tricks of the light.

The first book I remember reading that made me want to write was a children’s book by Edith Boutelle called The Ghost That Goofed. It was about a ghost named Belinda who wants to scare a new family away from the house she haunts. This book is reason I suggested Belinda as a name for our heroine in the Thorne & Cross novel The Ghosts of Ravencrest.

The subconscious mind is amazingly efficient – it wants to work your story out – and while I’ve never experienced it myself, my guess is that writer’s block is the result of the conscious mind having gotten too involved in the process.

The trouble, I think, is that horror is often confused with slasher, gore, and torture porn - which are actually very different entities. Slasher tends to be thin on plot and heavy on body count, whereas horror, as a veritable genre, leans more heavily on issues of morality - the eternal struggle between good and evil. Horror, as I understand it, demands answers to the hard questions about right and wrong.

They want to be stimulated. They want to read something that can get under their skin and hang out there for a while.

We don’t live in a rational world, Ethan. It’s an irrational world under a thin veneer of logic - just enough to throw us off.

When people find out you're a writer of any kind, they often think one of two things: that you're filthy rich ... or that you're dirt poor - neither of which are necessarily true.

While formula is good, there’s such a thing as too much of it. When technical rules are followed too closely, it shows, and if given the choice between a perfectly-coiffed, rule-abiding novel, and a damned good book with a some serious heart and soul, I’ll take the latter every time.

Without question, the absolute worst advice I was ever given was to never allow my characters to take full control of the story. I was told to “keep them on a tight leash,” and always “insist they do my bidding.” I have since learned otherwise. The characters know themselves–and the story–better than I, and it’s only when I set them free that the narrative comes to full life.

Yep,” I said, rolling the body onto its back and staring into the horrified, bloated face, “you’re a single-bagger. My kinda gal.” I gave her a smile and a friendly wink. The face stared back at me with that same frozen look of terror. “Oh, stop being so dramatic,” I said, “You’ll be pretty again, I promise.

You're so beautiful when you're dead.