Imajica
Author: Clive Barker
Release: January 1, 1991
Publisher: HarperCollins
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
ISBN-10: 0060179228
ISBN-13: 978-0060179229
Main Character(s): John “Gentle” Zacharias, Judith Odell, Pie ‘oh’ pah,
Synopsis: Hunted through New York City by an assassin hired by her husband, Judith is saved by her former lover, John Zacharias, but the two are quickly thrust into the strange netherworlds of Imajica, where they must fight unspeakable evils…
Declassified by Agent Palmer: Imajica is an epic tome worthy of your time
Quotes and Lines
…touched as he was by agoraphobia or, as he preferred it, “a perfectly rational fear of anyone I can’t blackmail.”
“When should I tell them you’ve come back?” Dowd asked.
“When I’ve made up a lie I can believe in,” came the reply.
The past had been written by men. But the future–pregnant with possibilities–the future was a woman.
Even though she had the freedom to buy a ticket to anywhere on the planet, a kind of claustrophobia was upon her. There was another world to which she wanted access. Until she got it, Earth itself would be a prison.
“Too much serenity’s bad for the circulation. Everybody needs a good rage once in a while.”
“People get frustrated with waiting and they end up stooping to politics. But it’s so shortsighted. Stupid sod.”
“Compassion’s always wise.”
“I’m an actor chappie. I fake my raptures. I’d like to change the world, but I end up as entertainment. Whereas all you lovers”–he spoke the word contemptuously–”who couldn’t give a fuck about the world as long as you’re feeling passionate, you’re the ones who make the cities burn and the nations tumble. You’re the engines in the tragedy, and most of the time you don’t even know it…”
“…I’m an artist with the soul of an accountant.”
He’d never been a sentimentalist or a hoarder. Objects were like glossy magazines fetching for a day, then readily discarded.
But life had to go on, even if oblivion waited in the wings. She needed milk, bread, and toilet paper; she needed deodorant and waste bags to line the bin in the kitchen. It was only in fiction that the daily round of living was ignored so that grand events could take center stage. Her body would hunger, tire, sweat, and digest until the final pall descended.
“What can I do? I don’t know a damn thing.”
“But we could learn,” she said. “That way, if we’re going to die, at least it won’t be in ignorance.”
“I missed my vocation,” Clem said, with Tay’s mischief in his features. “Burglary’s much more fun than banking.”
She was on her own, and in a world in which everyone else was blinded by obsession and obligation, that was a significant condition.
“I fight over food and women but never metaphysics,” Tick Raw said. “Besides we’ve joined a great mission. This time tomorrow you’ll be able to walk home from here!”
There was no beauty in these intricacies, only obsession.