My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?
Thomas LigottiA: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact โ the fact โ that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.
Thomas LigottiPersonally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.
Thomas LigottiThe sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (โThe Medusaโ)
Thomas LigottiThe human phenomenon is but the sum Of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity That there are persons of any kind When all there can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream
Thomas LigottiThis, then, is the ultimate, that is only, consolation: simply that someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, and โ like it or not โ peculiar set of experiences to appreciate. Amazing thing to say, the consolation of horror in art is that it actually intensifies our panic, loudens it on the sounding-board of our horror-hollowed hearts, turns terror up full blast, all the while reaching for that perfect and deafening amplitude at which we may dance to the bizarre music of our own misery.
Thomas LigottiThe โexperimentalโ writer, then, is simply following the storyโs commands to the best of his human ability. The writer is not the story, the story is the story. See? Sometimes this is very hard to accept and sometimes too easy. On the one hand, thereโs the writer who canโt face his fate: that the telling of a story has nothing at all to do with him; on the other hand, thereโs the one who faces it too well: that the telling of the story has nothing at all to do with him
Thomas Ligotti