Top 50 Jonathan L. Howard Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The spider-woman is purring.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

2. “Albert Einstein said that the only way to win at roulette is to steal from the table while the croupier isn’t looking.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

3. “Horst grinned. ‘Well, look at us. The necromancer and the vampire against the forces of elemental evil. The Brothers Cabal ride again!’ ‘Yeehaw,’ said Cabal evenly.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

4. “I thought you were talking figuratively! I kept asking and you kept saying, “An entrance to Hell,” so I thought, Very well, Cabal, have your moment of melodrama now and bathos later when it turns out your talking about Ipswitch or somewhere, but you meant it. You actually meant it literally.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

5. “There are ladies present, and I was raised to believe that being naked in front of strange ladies is something reserved for special occasions.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

6. “Now, let us consider the life of Johannes Cabal, if briefly. He is closing on his thirtieth year and is ageing better than most, although this is a product of a lifestyle where sunlight is shunned rather than the assiduous use of moisturiser. He stands a little over six feet tall. He is blond, blue eyed, and, perforce, pale. These are not unusual characteristics; those are coming.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

7. “Everyone is so desensitised that the potency of artfully deployed italics has long been lost. It was good enough for H. P. Lovecraft, but apparently it isn’t good enough for the modern world, filled as it is with obtuse bastards.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

8. “So, onwards! To adventure, excitement, and oodles of delicious murder.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

9. “Horst, I think I may have a conscience.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

10. “Cabal knew then that he was dealing with the kind of official with whom he always lost his temper. He lost his temper. ‘Don’t.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

11. “Inside the mansion of his mind, he was putting snakes back into boxes.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

12. “He’d asked for his to be cooked medium rare, which in Mirkarvian cuisine meant it had been shown a picture of an oven for a moment and then served. A very brief moment, mind.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

13. “I dislike seats without backs. I’ll forget myself, lean back, and fall over, and where shall my dignity be then? I shall stand.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

14. “Rufus ignored him, muttering in the lost tongue of a pre-human civilisation that had worked great sorcerous happenings yet had never invented the vowel.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

15. “I don’t want power. I just want things back the way they were, back to the good old days when we didn’t have to be polite to Nazis.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

16. “Zombies are so passe.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

17. “Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who’d decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

18. “Real history was unromantic, steeped in greed and blood and abject eye-rolling stupidity. An endless parade of putative Ozymandiases marching off to glory before snapping off at the ankles in the depths of the desert: that was human history.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

19. “In his experience, motives were simple. There was greed, there was jealousy, he’d seen plenty of revenge played out in gang-related crimes, there was even sadism, and sometimes there was flat-out stupidity, which was a pretty powerful motivator in itself.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

20. “Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

21. “He smiled with all the warmth of a dollhouse oven.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

22. “But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

23. “In the last few months, he’d found himself prey to strange twinges that, after some research, he had discovered to be his conscience.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

24. “It was about then that the effects of great wealth and a small gene pool started to spell their doom.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

25. “Cabal slapped him hard. Perhaps harder than necessary, but he felt he deserved a little recreation.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

26. “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” “But guns make it so much easier.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

27. “All your suits, cravats, socks, and shoes are black. All your shirts and underwear are white.’ He looked at the rug by the bed. ‘And your slippers are red tartan. You don’t have outfits, Johannes. You have a uniform.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

28. “This was true, in a largely false way:.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

29. “Oh, wait. You’re threatening us?’ Her smile returned, a delightful expression filled with spring sunshine, heartfelt joy, and the imminence of wholesale slaughter.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

30. “Almost unbidden, he released the safety, and his index finger slid inside the guard.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

31. “May I ask what happened to your last revolver?’ ‘It turned into a sword.’ ‘Of course it did.’ ‘And then the ghouls probably stole it.’ Cabal smiled with an expression so close to fondness that it made Horst stare. ‘The naughty rapscallions.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

32. “Horst lurked in a corner, sitting upon a tea chest, and undermining any menace his vampiric presence might have brought to proceedings by reading an ancient copy of Comic Cuts that he had found somewhere.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

33. “Lots of forms. Stacks of forms. An average of nine thousand, seven hundred, and forty-seven of them were required to gain entrance to Hell. The largest form ran to fifteen thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven questions. The shortest to just five, but five of such subtle phraseology, labyrinthine grammar, and malicious ambiguity that, released into the mortal world, they would certainly have formed the basis of a new religion or, at the least, a management course.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

34. “There had been no possibility that he had survived. His body had not tumbled into a foaming sea or into a clouded abyss from which he might later make an unexpected return through the good offices of kindly dolphins or giant eagles. Cabal had himself checked that all life was extinguished by searching for a pulse, looking for clouding on a mirror held to the corpse’s mouth, and by kicking repeatedly.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

35. “There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and that they are just allowing everybody else to camp out on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

36. “Marriage, it seemed, was truly an institution; in this case, something along the lines of a prison or an asylum.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

37. “It was like being threatened by wolves dressed as sheep, who had sunk so deep into their method acting that they were now unclear about the whole ‘being dangerous’ thing.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

38. “I forget all about how good-looking she was at a distance because, close up? My balls pretty much sucked up into my body.” “I like your friend, Dan,” said Lovecraft. “He’s graphic.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

39. “He smiled, and it was like a bloodless cut. ‘No,’ he replied, amused by something. ‘No, not a doctor. I haven’t the bedside manner for it.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

40. “All science is based on the precept that we know too little. Ignorance is not bliss. It is only ignorance. Its bed partner may be the inertia of the conservative. Often it is only fear.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

41. “Horst was suddenly filled with great admiration for Miss Barrow, and a desire for popcorn.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

42. “He smiled with the benevolence of somebody watching an unlovable toddler walk under a table and bang their head painfully.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

43. “Every branch of science likes to think it’s important, and of course, they all are. But they’re specializations. Much of biology, for example, is biochemistry, which is a specialization of organic chemistry, which is a specialization of chemistry, which is a specialization of physics, and physics is practical mathematics. No matter which set of matryoshka dolls you open in science, the innermost is always math.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

44. “Sighing heavily, for he disliked violence generally and murder in particular, Cabal set off to commit violent murder.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

45. “In Atlantic City, Bernie Hayesman looked at the plate of ribs, and he was not happy. He had asked for an omelet, a simple omelet to be sent up to his office, and they had sent ribs. He couldn’t understand it. He’d spoken to the chef personally. They’d discussed eggs, if briefly. There was no earthly way “omelet” could have been misconstrued as “ribs”. He looked at the plate of ribs, and the ribs looked back. Neither he nor they were overjoyed at the situation.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

46. “The truth of it was that an eternity of very much anything becomes torture after a while.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

47. “You don’t?′ Horst was so astounded he almost leapt to his feet. His smile returned in full power. ‘Then you have treat waiting for you! It’s wonderful! I mean, I remember it as being wonderful. I do not eat cake. Not now. Being a vampire and everything. You did know I’m a vampire, didn’t you?’ He suddenly seemed to remember that they were doing introductions and held up his hand. ‘Horst Cabal, vampire. Didn’t especially want to be, but there you go. I miss Battenberg. Hello, everyone!”

— Jonathan L. Howard

48. “They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

49. “We’re having fun, and I’ve met some of your friends and your brother, all of whom seem absolutely delicious.”

— Jonathan L. Howard

50. “So she leapt without hesitation toward it trailing a silken thread behind her as they fell, she a model of concentration, he singing about sausages.”

— Jonathan L. Howard