Quotes on Monsters

Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.

I never set limits or created mental barriers. You may have read that I imagined my biceps as big as mountain peaks when I did my curling exercises. This visualization process was essential if I was to gain the kind of mass and size I needed to win the mr Olympia contest against monsters like Sergio Olivia and Lou ferrigno.

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

When someone asks, 'Does success make you into a monster?' I always say, 'No, it enables you to be a monster.'

Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?

I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

But the problem is to make the soul into a monster

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

Kunlun Mountain Over the earth the greenblue monster Kunlun who has seen all spring color and passion of men. Three million dragons of white jade soar and freeze the whole sky with snow. When a summer sun heats the globe rivers flood and men turn into fish and turtles. Who can judge a thousand years of accomplishments or failures?

Here we find the moat of thieves. And just as a lizard, with a quick, slick slither, Flicks across the highway from hedge to hedge, Fleeter than a flash, in the battering dog-day weather, A fiery little monster, livid, in a rage, Black as any peppercorn, came and made a dart At the guts of the others, and leaping to engage One of the pair, it pierced him at the part Through which we first draw food; then loosed its grip And fell before him, outstretched and apart.

One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.

It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.

But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

I am now considered such a monster, that I hesitate to darken with my shadow, the doors of those I love, lest I should bring upon them misfortune.