Michael Finkel Quotes

The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone, like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.

I don't like being in houses alone.

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.

Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone-I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realise.

Fear is a huge thing for older people.

I think in the case of horror, it's a chance to confront a lot of your worse fears and those fears usually have to do, ironically, with powerlessness and isolation.

Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.

The thought of being alone when time goes on is a little bit scary sometimes, but not really.

I had a terror-since September -I could tell to none-and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground-because I am afraid.

These are frightening times...when she feels herself annointed by loneliness.

Fear is the loneliest feeling. You can be in a throng of people, but if you're afraid, you're on your own.

Isn't it fascinating how long a few minutes seem when you are completely alone with not a familiar face in sight?

He died alone because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone.

She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone.

I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.

Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.

Being alone is very difficult.

People's imagination is the most effective tool in creating terror or dread.

Horror, for me, has to involve some sort of fantasy. Horror is something that is in your dreams or your nightmares.

Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives.

When it grows dark, we always need someone. This thought, the product of anxiety, only comes to me in the evenings, just when I'm about to end my writerly explorations.