Top 140 Richard Matheson Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “But it’s so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.”

— Richard Matheson

2. “That which you believe becomes your world.”

— Richard Matheson

3. “Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”

— Richard Matheson

4. “After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.”

— Richard Matheson

5. “How long did it take for a past to die?”

— Richard Matheson

6. “When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?”

— Richard Matheson

7. “How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough.”

— Richard Matheson

8. “Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled.”

— Richard Matheson

9. “There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.”

— Richard Matheson

10. “All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth.”

— Richard Matheson

11. “Heaven would never be heaven without you.”

— Richard Matheson

12. “I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do Harry Potter or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didnt write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.”

— Richard Matheson

13. “Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn’t hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.”

— Richard Matheson

14. “In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.”

— Richard Matheson

15. “The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him.” Thank you, Dr. Van Helsing, he thought, putting down his copy of Dracula.”

— Richard Matheson

16. “No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death.”

— Richard Matheson

17. “Let this hell be our heaven.”

— Richard Matheson

18. “Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.”

— Richard Matheson

19. “But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician?”

— Richard Matheson

20. “A man could get used to anything if he had to.”

— Richard Matheson

21. “If you only knew the beauty which awaits you, Daniel. If you only knew how lovely are the realms which lie beyond this house. Would you keep yourself locked in a barren cell when all the beauties of the universe await you on the outside?”

— Richard Matheson

22. “I couldn’t tell you, Robert, what the higher ramifications are of being soul mates. I can tell you this however. As long as you are separated from your own, that long are you troubled. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how exquisite the environment in which you find yourself. To be half.”

— Richard Matheson

23. “The origin of the word “body” is the Anglo-Saxon “bodig” meaning abode. Which is what the physical body is, you see, Robert. A transient dwelling for the real self.”

— Richard Matheson

24. “It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.”

— Richard Matheson

25. “What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?”

— Richard Matheson

26. “Why should a Jew fear the cross?” he said. “Why should a vampire who had been a Jew fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of them suffer from hysterical blindness before mirrors. But as far as the cross goes – well, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross.” She.”

— Richard Matheson

27. “To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, its only because we havent been able to understand it yet.”

— Richard Matheson

28. “He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.”

— Richard Matheson

29. “What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?”

— Richard Matheson

30. “The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.”

— Richard Matheson

31. “He brushed his teeth carefully and used dental floss. He tried to take good care of his teeth because he was his own dentist now. Some things could go to pot, but not his health, he thought. Then why don’t you stop pouring alcohol into yourself? he thought. Why don’t you shut the hell up? he thought.”

— Richard Matheson

32. “That’s what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed.”

— Richard Matheson

33. “And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.”

— Richard Matheson

34. “The strength of the vampire is that no one will believe in him.”

— Richard Matheson

35. “He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien. Once he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic.”

— Richard Matheson

36. “When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor.”

— Richard Matheson

37. “He forgot everything, time and place; it was just the two of them together, needing each other, survivors of a black terror embracing because they had found each other.”

— Richard Matheson

38. “It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second. Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.”

— Richard Matheson

39. “Staring down at the brook, I remembered a stream near Mammoth Lake. We’d parked the camper just above it and, all night, listened to it splashing across rocks and stones; a lovely sound.”

— Richard Matheson

40. “Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.”

— Richard Matheson

41. “Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?”

— Richard Matheson

42. “For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him.”

— Richard Matheson

43. “People are not punished for their deeds but by them.”

— Richard Matheson

44. “Really now, search your soul, lovie-is the vampire so bad? All he does is drink blood.”

— Richard Matheson

45. “Don’t families stay together?” “Not necessarily,” he told me. “Earth ties have less meaning here. Relationships of thought, not blood, are what count.”

— Richard Matheson

46. “The essence of it all – this is the important part – was the knowledge that my thoughts had been real. Not just the things I said and did. What went on in my mind as well, positive or negative.”

— Richard Matheson

47. “Again he shook his head. The world’s gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!”

— Richard Matheson

48. “Now when I die, I shall only be dead.”

— Richard Matheson

49. “As he stepped into the sunlight, he heard the seals barking loudly. They must have an audience. Slick glory seekers. Whiskered prima donnas.”

— Richard Matheson

50. “It’s a time when men and women come to know what they truly are. A time of purging.” I’d been looking at the ceiling as he spoke. At his final words, I turned to face him in surprise. “Is that what the Catholics mean by purgatory?” “In essence.” He nodded. “A period during which each soul is cleansed by a self-imposed recognition of past deeds – and misdeeds.”

— Richard Matheson