For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happinessโshould such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconceptionโthat can compensate us for lifeโs hurt.
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 LigottiBest-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. Itโs like network television. Iโm your local cable access station.
Thomas LigottiConsciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.
Thomas LigottiWhile a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution โ so one theory goes โ this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us โฆ we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see โฆ Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are โ hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones
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 Ligotti