After Avalon said what she said, I panicked. Someone tells me I can't remember what I definitely do remember, and sometimes I panic. I'm not as used to it as I often pretend. As I pretend to be used to it, I mean to say. The false memories.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the of then who left a snapshot for the of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madness at the individual level.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

Assassination is almost always unthinkable to moral, thinking men until after a holocaust has come and gone.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

Chance wanting to defend her grandfather, but not about to leave the library, dusty safe sanctuary of shelves and glass cases and the musty smell of all the books, the door locked from the inside against bird nervous aunts who thought maybe a few slabs of smoked ham and a spoonful of mashed potatoes would make everything better, would make anything right again.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

Dance closes her eyes, remembering all the times that have been so much worse than this, all the horror and shame and sorrow to give her strength. The burning parts of her no one and nothing can ever touch, the fire where her soul used to be.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

Demons never die quietly, and a week ago the storm was a proper demon, sweeping through the Caribbean after her long ocean crossing from Africa, a category five when she finally came ashore at San Juan before moving on to Santo Domingo and then Cuba and Florida. But now she's grown very old, as her kind measures age, and these are her death throes. So she holds tightly to this night, hanging on with the desperate fury of any dying thing, any dying thing that might once have thought itself invincible.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

Haunting are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways... Too often, people make the mistake of trying to use their art to capture a ghost, but only end up spreading their haunting to countless other people.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

I am a dead woman. Dead and insane.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

I began keeping diaries after they locked Rosemary up at Butler and I went to live with Aunt Elaine in Cranston until I was eighteen, but even the diaries can't be trusted. For instance, there's a series of entries describing a trip to New Brunswick that I'm pretty sure I never took. It used to scare me, those recollections of things that never took place, but I've gotten used to it.

— Caitlín R. Kiernan