Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.
Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and perceptions that find perfect expression in fiction. We are built this way, we create stories by reflex, unstoppably. But this elegant system really works best when the elements of the emerging story, whether is is being written or being read, are taken as literal fact. Almost always, to respond to the particulars of the fantastic as if they were metaphorical or allegorical is to drain them of vitality.
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
Quote Detail
Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and perceptions that find perfect expression in fiction. We are built this way, we create stories by reflex, unstoppably. But this elegant system really works best when the elements of the emerging story, whether is is being written or being read, are taken as literal fact. Almost always, to respond to the particulars of the fantastic as if they were metaphorical or allegorical is to drain them of vitality.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
Suddenly, she heard a loud bang, a thump and a scream that caused her to jump from the bed. The hair on the back of her neck stood straight up and her body became one big goosebump.
...there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride.
So, I poisoned his coffee this morning and watched him drink it.
Your friend will pay deeply for what he__ done here tonight,_ Chance snarled once he wiped off most of the blood. __ou can tell him to run as far and as fast as he can, I__l get him. Just let him know that once this is all over, it__ just gonna be you and me and a world full of corpses.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel for us. We are who we are.