Quote – Inhabiting Other People’s Lives

“As a writer, I spend hours alone with the blinds drawn against the sun, inhabiting other people’s lives. Any reader who has ever lost themselves in a well-written tale of terror on a stormy night will understand what I mean when i say that I sometimes wonder if we don’t bring the stories back into the world with us by reading them alone; whether or not they stay contained. A board creaks in an upstairs room even though you know you’re alone in the house. A tapping on the glass has to be a branch tortured by the wind. A sign in the shadows of the far recesses of the next room has to be a draft. The slumped figure drifting just out of your line of sight is a shadow cast by the candles. You’re alone, reading.”

Michael Rowe – Introduction: In Praise of Queer Fear in Queer Fear (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000)