John Burnside Quotes

What I am afraid of is the first thing I was ever aware of being afraid of and what I have told my daughter countless times she need not fear: being alone in the dark. It is a small prison of emotion from which there is no escape. It is also, in its own way, a shattering revelation.

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone.

I lost my childhood. I didn't play football or video games. Or have birthdays or the love of a family.

Growing up, I was afraid of the dark.

I am very scared of being outside my home for long periods of time.

The little things that made up the fabric of the first six years of my life were suddenly ripped away, and I didn't have anyone around me who loved me. Not one single person.

I'm afraid of the dark. I'm not kidding.

I was afraid of the dark until I was, like, 15 and slept with a nightlight.

In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely understand.

I am actually a big sissy, and growing up, I never used to watch horror movies. 'Bambi' gave me nightmares.

When I was little, I didn't like being left on my own in the dark.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

I remember my mom saying that when I was little, I had this light that shined really big, and that she'd watched my light become very dark.

I remember as a kid being scared of the things that go bump in the night, but I was way more scared of adults.

The first movie that ever scared me, I feel like it wasn't a scary movie. I feel like it was 'Dennis the Menace' or something.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear.

You’re not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this arena, trying to think my way out.

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.

Leave me in the night but please don't leave me in the dark

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 ?

... we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.

Outside is dark. The kitchen light is loud. It deafens me as I walk towards it.

Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.

He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine.