any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

I remember when I watched 'Hellraiser' with my mother. She cried when she saw my name in the opening credits, and I had to tell her that that was the happiest she was going to be for the next two hours.

There is no delight the equal of dread

Your flesh is killing your spirit. You have forsaken yourself.

Flesh could not keep its glamour, nor eyes their sheen. They would go to nothing soon. But monsters are forever.

Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him. "Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her. "It takes a man with real heart" —he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest— "to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

Richard Christian Matheson is a master of compression. He knows how to catch a moment in words and convey it straight to the reader's heart.