Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
Stephen Graham JonesRead
If you keep having to dip into the story's past to explain the present, then there's a good chance your real story's in the past, and you're just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.
Interpretation
The essence of your current story often lies in your past experiences.
This quote suggests that if one finds themselves frequently referring back to the past in order to make sense of the present narrative, it indicates that the core of that narrative is rooted in past events. It implies that understanding one's history is crucial in order to fully comprehend the current situation or story being told.
In practice
In a book discussion about character development and backstory.
Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.
I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.
Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.
Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.
The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.
He that comes to Christ cannot, it is true, always get on as fast as he would. Poor coming soul, thou art like the man that would ride full gallop whose horse will hardly trot. Now the desire of his mind is not to be judged of by the slow pace of the dull jade he rides on, but by the hitching and kicking and spurring as he sits on his back. Thy flesh is like this dull jade, it will not gallop after Christ, it will be backward though thy soul and heaven lie at stake.
I no longer gave a sick dog's drop for the wisdom, the reliability and the authority of the public's literary mind, those creeps and old ladies of vested reviewing.
Return good for good; return evil with justice.
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