Robert Bloch may be best known for his mid-century chiller Psycho and its memorable adaptation from Alfred Hitchcock, but in his decades-long career as a cheerfully ghoulish genre writer, Bloch wrote science fiction, horror, thrillers, and hundreds of short stories. Initially inspired by Lovecraftian horror, Bloch quickly branched out into any and all combinations of imagination, humor, and grand guignol and rode the pulp magazine train all the way to the cult classic pantheon. (When it came to Lovecraft, the admiration was mutual: Bloch was the only person Lovecraft ever dedicated a story to; Bloch also appears in a cameo in The Night Ocean, Paul la Farge’s brilliant reimagining of Lovecraft’s life and loves.)
While most of us think of Psycho as psychological suspense at its best, knowing of Bloch’s far-flung inspirations and even further-flung work helps put the author’s ghoulish and rather wacky sense of humor in context. Bloch enjoyed the spaces between, the twists and turns of language, the ability to shift from laughter to terror in an instant and back again. He was impossible to define, and impossible to stop reading. His world view was cynical, dark, and desperate, but the kind of cynical, dark, and desperate that keeps you going. That lets you laugh instead of cry, or shudder instead of convulse. The kind of worldview that makes you feel like the more you understand about the darkest parts of life, the more you’ll have a grasp over your own fate. He didn’t go quietly into that dark night, he went laughing.
In honor of his birthday (Bloch was born April 5, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois), we’ve rounded up 20 of Robert Bloch’s strangest, wildest, and most provocative quotes, because we could all use a little more of his perspective. Plus, doesn’t he look just like Joel Grey?
Bloch at work.
On preserving your inner child
“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
On the meaning of horror
“Horror is the removal of masks.”
“Evil exists everywhere. Sometimes I think our limited senses are designed to protect us from awareness of its presence. We trust them to provide us with knowledge but it may be that they block out realization of horrors we cannot bear.” (Night of the Ripper)
“Comedy and horror are opposite sides of the same coin.”
Figure out what makes you laugh.
“I haven’t had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister.”
On the joys of the writing life
“So I had this problem—work or starve. So I thought I’d combine the two and decided to become a writer.”
“I discovered, much to my surprise—and particularly if I was writing in the first person—that I could become a psychopath quite easily. I could think like one and I could devise a manner of unfortunate occurrences. So I probably gave up a flourishing, lucrative career as a mass murderer.” (Bloch in Faces of Fear: Encounters With the Creators of Modern Horror, by Douglas E. Winters, 1990)
Support the arts.
“I urge you with all sincerity to get to work, write a book, write two—three—four books, just as a matter of course. Don’t worry about ‘wasting’ an idea or ‘spoiling’ a plot by going too fast. If you are capable of turning out a masterpiece, you’ll get other and even better ideas in the future. Right now your job is to write, and to write books so that by so doing you’ll gain the experience to write still better books later on.” (Bloch in an August 27, 1947 letter to Ray Bradbury)
Develop healthy reading habits.
“That was still my meat—the true-detective yarn. I picked it up and started to read it over, wondering for the ten thousandth time why so many people are interested in crime and its solution.” (Shooting Star/Spiderweb)
“You hate people. Because, really, you’re afraid of them, aren’t you? Always have been, ever since you were a little tyke. Rather snuggle up in a chair under the lamp and read. You did it thirty years ago, and you’re still doing it now. Hiding away under the covers of a book.” (Psycho)
“I always carry a pistol when I go [to the New York Public Library]. Never did trust those stone lions.”
Take the time to get to know people.
“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.”
“Funny how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie.” (Psycho)
“Once you began speculation about that, once you admitted to yourself that you didn’t really know how another person’s mind operated, then you came up against the ultimate admission—anything was possible.” (Psycho)
A place for everything and everything in its place.
“The car was in the swamp. And the hamper was in the trunk. And the body was in the hamper. The twisted torso and the bloody head. But he couldn’t think about that. He mustn’t. There were other things to do.” (Psycho)
Sanity is a matter of perspective.
“I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.” (Psycho)
“She was the only one left, and she was real.
To be the only one, and to know that you are real—that’s sanity, isn’t it?” (Psycho)
Family is so, so important.
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.” (Psycho)
Friends, too.
“Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.”
On life and death
“Life is only a bedtime story before a long, long sleep.”
