Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His books include Teatro Grottesco, Noctuary, and The Nightmare Factory.
Thomas Ligotti: his writings, while unique in style, have been noted as major continuations of several literary genres—most prominently Lovecraftian horror—and have overall been described as works of “philosophical horror”, often written as philosophical novels with a “darker” undertone which is similar to gothic fiction. The Washington Post called him “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction”; another critic declared “It’s a skilled writer indeed who can suggest a horror so shocking that one is grateful it was kept offstage.”
Five Quotes From Thomas Ligotti
- To my mind, a well-developed sense of humour is the surest indication of a person’s humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humour may be.
- I’m completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.
- Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.
- We live in a permanent state of bad faith, a mutual representation of ourselves to one another for the sake of remaining sane and following our biological imperative to continue as a species.
- When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories.
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