I've only read The Collector once... and I'm determined never to read it again, as it couldn't possibly have the same chilling impact as it did the first time.

The Collector makes me feel sick every time I recall it.

A line from one of Antonia Forest's books

'...but of course, once in every lifetime tomorrow never comes'

So many good ones here; I second 'Kevin' and 'Survivor Type' and 'After the Hole'.

Mine are:

The last paragraph of the prologue of The Secret History, where Richard is talking about Bunny's death..."At one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."

And the last paragraph of The Collector, which I can't quote word for word, but you realise the protagonist has selected his next victim and is preparing the cellar in readiness...

I read some seriously disturbing horror when I worked at a library. The TV series Fallen Angel gave me the creeps when I saw the trailer - I mentioned to DH that the only other thing that had given me that feeling that was a book called 'The Four Last Things'. Strangely the TV series was an adaptation of it!

I've read Voyage of the Dawntreader recently too and noticed that Janite. That date comes up in other books too I've noticed - spooky

Re. Rebecca - the very beginning when the narrator is describing going back to Mandeley in a dream and hearing the pitter patter of the leaves on the drive which sound like a woman's footsteps running down to the cove . . . shivery!

I am re-reading the Narnia books at the moment. There is a line in "Dawntreader@ which says something like "after September 11th, he forgot all about writing in his diary" which I must admit, in a post 9/11 world, really jumped out at me last night.

Oh Jude the Obscure. It's years since I read it but so so awful.

MrsD and ImOverThere - it does stick with you doesn't it?! Mind you I'm trying to think in terms of 'life's too short, better get on with it' rather than consulting the calender and wondering 'will it, at some point in the furture, be today?' <shudders>

Just wish I could remember which one it was in now!

MrsDanvers, it might well be that line!

It's been a while since I read it.... [blush again]

Poem by Edwin Morgan "black block condemned to stand, not crash"

OK, am now using this thread as my Amazon wish list. I read A LOT, and cannot for the life of me remember lines like you guys are quoting! I bow before masters!

MavisGrind - that line from Iris Murdoch has made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I am going to have to try and forget that.

Also the line in Iain Banks' "Use of Weapons" - "It was a good battle, and they nearly won" - on which the whole plot twist pivots!

I know, it chilled me to the core. Not one to read with a young baby - I spent the entire time practically in tears wondering how I would protect DS [hormonal] - but it is so well written I had to finish it. And actually it does finish somewhat upbeat.

I could have lived without DP inadvertently giving me a horror scare with his snoring one night though 1am, settling DS in a darkened room, half asleep, I hear GROANING echoing down the corridor. I nearly had an undignified moment, I can tell you.

F&T do you mean when the iron voice echoes Julia & winston with 'You are the dead.'?

See op

In "After the Hole" where it says in the "report" section right at the end "It is generally accepted that [what's-his-name] died on the second day." Sorry, not read it for about 15 years!

cyteen - I couldn't even finish that bloody book. World War Z will remain unfinished for me. I doubt I'll be able to go back to it. Zombies scare the shit out of me anyway and that book is soooooo well written. Poopy poop pants!

What a great thread! Absolutely agree with the Jude "we was too many" bit and 1984.

Also the bit when Winston's "safe" house was suddenly revealed to be not safe. Can't remember the exact line - will try and search it.

The end of Brave New World is pretty horrible too

SLF, found The Yellow Wallpaper on Amazon by Virago Classics,

will try to avoid that holiday scenario, doesn't sound like much fun somehow

janeite, that is a great story. mmmm ladyfingers

I think we should set up a post-Jude recovery group.

Blardy norah, both Jude the Obscure & Heart of Darkness are on my To Read List, don't tell me anything else <covers eyes>

Mavis, that is quite chilling, don't think I'll forget that now.

There should be a spooked out emoticon really, maybe one with a wobbly line for a mouth...

Yes, Jude the Obscure here too, by an absolute mile. Never mind chilling, I was devastated !!

The same bit from the Lovely Bones! Also The trun of the screw I'd forgotten that as I read it years ago but it was really chilling. Interested to her more about "We need to talk about Kevin" as I saw it on my aunts shelf yesterday and wondered about borrowing it. Is it really scary?

oh and Mrs D, don't know how you've ordered TYP but it's in a collection edited by Joyce Carol Oates called American Gothic Tales. Brilliant one to take on holiday (as long as you're not holidaying alone in a creepy old house in bad weather )

oh yes - Jude the Obscure and little old Father Time - terrible moment. The only other time I've just sat in shock at a book that way was with Germinal.

Also Heart of Darkness - not so much spine tingling perhaps as soul-emptying "the horror"...

SPOILER ALERT - DON'T READ IF YOU'VE NOT READ REBECCA!!!

The bit at the end of Rebecca where they come round the corner of the road and the house is on fire.

There is a fantastic short story by Stephen King, called 'Survivor Type' about a doctor who crashes on a deserted island, with a broken ankle and only a supply of morphine. As he faces starvation, and as his ankle gets worse and worse, he eventually decides to amputate - for both medical and culinary reasons. There is a great line - "I washed it very carefully first" which always makes my teeth itch!

And though Hardy drives me mad, that bit in 'Jude' - 'because we were too many' has always stuck with me.

Brokeback Mountain eh? haven't read the story but I thought the film was diabolical!

To parpaphrase a line from an Iris Murdoch book (can't remember which one) <hopeless emoticon>

every year we pass the date of our death.

Has stuck with me for ages that thought.

The section in The Lovely Bones where it describes Susie's 'soul' colliding with Ruth :

"On my way out of Earth, I touched a girl named Ruth. She went to my school but we'd never been close. She was standing in my path that night when my soul shrieked out of Earth. I could not help but graze her. Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn't calculate my steps. I didn't have time for contemplation. In violence, it is the getting away that you concentrate on."

That bit freaked me out, more than anything else in the book.

The bit in Lord of the Flies when someone tells Ralph they are after him and that Jack has
"sharpened a stick at both ends" scared the life out of me when I was a teenager. It just sounds so horrible.

The end of that book is totally chilling too, when the shift in perspective gives you the officer looking at a bunch of snivelling kids after the life and death battle that the reader has gone through with Ralph and Piggy.

lololol at Wittering

The Yellow Wallpaper looks good!... have added it to Amazon wish list, thanks to MN recommendations it's now 15 pages long, I joke not

That line from Harry Potter chilled me too SunshineMummy, it's the last bit 'they are coming', <shudder>

SLF, yes Rebecca is v creepy. Particularly when she encourages her to jump out of the window, but there isn't one line in particular that sticks out in my memory iyswim.

Points to Wittering for most original use of 1984 quotes I think

The bit in Jude the Obscure when the murder/suicide of the children is revealed. I was so shocked I just sat there swearing at Hardy for doing something so awful.

Re 1984, when DH and I were just getting used to the endless exahusting toddler demand to repeat a certain action or whatever, we used to say to DS1 'Not me, not me -- Do it to Julia.'

Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox too. Couple of lines in that.

Lissya that's the bit in Kevin. Sent chills down my spine at how bloody awful it was as a book. Introspective, predictable twaddle.

The Yellow Wallpaper's been touted as a film for ages. It would only be loosely based wouldn't it as there's not much there to translate across. Some good short stories made into films. Brokeback Mountain springs to mind.

Boy In The Striped Pyjamas has the chill factor. Reminded me of reading Goodnight Mister Tom as a child.

Well, the last few books I've read have included World War Z so there were plenty of zombie-based chills from that. One in particular sticks out - when the narrator is interviewing a sculptor who makes figures of zombies - says something like 'he has just finished his latest masterpiece, a man wearing a torn Baby Bjorn'

Currently reading Darwin's Children so I can quote it verbatim:

"The mob torched one of Augustine's goddamned camps," Mitch said. "They burned the children in their barracks. They poured gasoline around the pilings and lit them up. The guards just stood back and watched. Two hundred kids roasted to death. Kids just like my daughter."

RoseoftheOrient - I read "We need to talk about Kevin" only around 2 months ago but baby brain plus reading in snatches around feeds means I can't remember what happened at the patio... can you fill me in please?!

Is it at the end when "you know who" and "you know who" are "you know where"?

<trying not to give anything away to those who have not read it>

lots of films seem to come from short stories, but I don't see how we would get inside (erm, forget her name)'s head.

Actually, Mrs Danvers - I found Rebecca very creepy! Also Jane Eyre and the Secret Garden. i would say that it was because I was only young, but I was reading The Secret Garden aloud to dd1 and I still found this whole idea of someone else in the house who you don't know unnerving.

Then Edgar Allan Poe. Not to be read when you're alone in the house... [terrified emoticon]

The Yellow Wallpaper as a film? Not sure about that - it is so short for one. I suspect there will be lots of padding with conversations with the husband.

They're making the Yellow Wallpaper into a film? How on earth will they manage that? It's not as if it has much of a plot really... find it very hard to imagine how they'll film it given that most of it takes place inside her head.

Definitely a chilling one though. I just feel so sorry for the main character - think enforced bed rest would be enough to drive anyone bonkers!

in "We need to talk about Kevin" when she turns on the patio lights....<shiver>

they're making the yellow wallpaper into a film, should be interesting..

Oh the bit in the last Harry Potter when Kingsley's patronus appears and says something like "Scrimgeor is dead, the ministry has fallen. They are coming."

The last page of Timeoleon Vieta Comes Home by Dan Rhodes. I gasped.

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

does it for me

I LOVE 'The Yellow Wallpaper' - good one!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. The ending and the way she moves round the room.

<<shudder>>

Oh gosh: I have just read 'A Clockwork Orange' which was one big chill from start to finish!

i was reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and i reached a point where the hairs on the back on my neck stood up

can't think at the moment, but MrsDanvers your nn made me larf

freakyily i was going to say something from war of the worlds, but i just saw the concert so is fresh in my mind.

Well bearing on mind the whole Room 101 bit completely creeps me out, I think we can safely say it's a pretty chilling book!

There was a line from War of the Worlds that used to make me shiver. I'll have to try and remember Google it!

How funny - I read the title of the thread and I immediately thought "he loved Big Brother" - from the same book!

Ooh yes, that would have been No.2 for me

Funnily enough, same book -

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever."

Ugh.

Have just read 1984 for the first time (-aged 32 - late I know) We did Animal Farm at school but I didn't get around to reading this until now.

I was fairly gripped and enjoying it to the point where Julia and Winston are echoed with 'You are the dead' & omg, it was so chilling..couldn't put the blardy thing down till the end

Any MNers experienced any similar literary chills?