More by Thomas Ligotti
If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
...One must take into account the shocking fact that we live on a world that spins. After considering this truth, nothing should come as a surprise.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
To be alive is to inhabit a nightmare without hope of awakening to a natural world, to have our bodies embedded neck-deep in a quagmire of dread, to live as shut-ins in a house of horrors from which nobody gets out alive.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
You lie in the bed,
an arm full of tubes,
a mind full of drugs,
but still thinking.
You see the figure
enter the quiet room
and you lift your arm
and focus your mind.
You ask the doctor,
if it can be arranged,
that your last day
not be your worst day.
Death Poems (2013)
As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
The major part of our species seems able to undergo any trauma without significantly re-examining its household mantras, including “everything happens for a reason,” “the show must go on,” “accept the things you cannot change,” and any other adage that gets people to keep their chins up.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
“We, as licensed protectors of the species and members in good standing of the master-class of the race, by the power invested in us by those who wish to survive and reproduce, vow to enforce the fiction that life is worth having and worth living come hell or irreparable brain damage.”
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)
All Thomas Ligotti quotes →