Memory, prophecy and fantasy—the past, the future and the dreaming moment between—are all in one country, living one immortal day.
By Clive Barker
Before life, the dream of life. Before the thing solid, the solid thing dreamt.
From The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
It was a distress she'd not felt since childhood when somebody (she'd forgotten who) had taught her the trick of looking at infinity by putting two mirrors face to face, each staring into the other's reflection. She'd been twelve, thirteen at most, and completely spooked by the idea of this emptiness echoing emptiness, back and forth, back and forth, until they reached the limits of light. For years after she'd remembered that moment, confronted with a physical representation of something her mind revolted at.
From The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
From The Great and Secret Show
Evelyn: My first husband collected American Abstract Expressionists. Pollock, Rothko. Chilly stuff. I divorced him.
Grillo: Because of the painting?
Evelyn: Because of the collecting, the relentless collecting. It's a sickness...I said to him towards the end — Ethan, I don't want to be just another of your possessions. They go or I go. He chose the stuff that didn't talk back at him. He was that kind of man. Cultured, but stupid.
From The Great and Secret Show
Hotchkiss: There's a whole world...about which we know next to nothing. And it's changing all the time. Sure, there's rivers, but there's a good deal else besides. Whole species that never see the sun.
Grillo: Doesn't sound like much fun.
Hotchkiss: They accommodate, as we all do. They live with their limitations. We're all of us living on a fault line, after all, which could open up at any moment. We accommodate that.