A jump scare in a horror movie might make you spill your popcorn. A monster brought to life via special effects might send shivers down your spine. But what does it take to truly get under your skin? For many of us, the answer is words.
Words have the power to communicate unsettling ideas, showcase demented minds at work, and unleash terrors locked away in our own imaginations. Whether it's an eerie passage in a book or a creepy line of dialogue in a movie, words are often what make the real scares happen.
To illustrate, we've put together this list of the scariest quotes of all time, drawn from books, movies, and perhaps the most frightening source of all, the Bible. So turn on all the lights in the house, pull up the covers, and read these unforgetable scary sayings... if you dare.
Scariest Quotes From Literature
It's no surprise that many of the scariest quotes ever come from books and poems. Before Stephen King and creepypastas – indeed, before horror was even a genre – authors have been scaring the bejeezus out of readers with their chilling use of language.
· "Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice."
Inferno (Dante Alighieri)
· "Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble."
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
· "O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.
· Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last."
Abarat (Clive Barker)
· "Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it."
The Ritual (Adam Nevill)
· "Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
'Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, 'art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"
The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)
· "Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk."
Robert Bloch
· "I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest – expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat."
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
· "Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
· "Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."
I Am Legend (Richard Matheson)
· "Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know."
Songs of Sapphique (Catherine Fisher)
· "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
The Tempest (William Shakespeare)
