Clive Barker Quotes

I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

I have totally hitched my wagon to the horse of storytelling, and the idea that none of us know why we're born, or why we're gonna die, or what we're planted here, or what's on the other side of the galaxy, or when time began, or when time end. The whole nature of reality is pretty up for grabs, really.

God made (human beings) because he loves stories.

So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

I want to remind you today that the greatest Artist of all time created you. He dreamed about you long before you were born, before a single brushstroke of your life took place.

Combine two words, Myth and History. What do you get? Mystery.

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because it's a complete package. You know the beginning, middle, and end. You can plan it out more, which I like. But with television you get a new script every week, so it's constantly a mystery as to what you're going to be doing.

He brought imagination to the story of the Creation.

God made man because he loved to listen to stories.

I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger. I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous. I want to be with Jesus, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.

If you're a fan of anything I do, I'm always telling a story. I'm into that - I like it when you don't know if it was true or not.

I think you can tilt too far to the side of the story where the message is just simply entertainment. So I think your goal has to be to craft in one sentence what the truth is you are trying to convey. And then you find or create a story that you wrap around that truth.

I sometimes imagine a great writer as a sort of God-surrogate: the writer is doing his or her human-best to emulate what God might think of is, if God was inclined to observe some human beings and present their activities in the form of a narrative.

In the realm of strong A.I. or in the realm of human consciousness, I think that it's been something that troubles humans or forces us to look at it over and over for millennia, or as long as we've really been conscious, because there is no answer. There is no explanation for us, even for a one percent grip to hold on to. So we just don't know why we're here, we don't know how consciousness is created.

The purpose of life is life.

I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery. (Steve Jobs)

Dirt's a funny thing,' the Boss said. 'Come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?

I think a myth is created from truth.

Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

Human beings are what I think of as "biomythic" animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order.