Heart Of Darkness Quotes

I hate being awake at three in the morning. It is the godforsaken heart of darkness when the body runs slow, and the brain runs slower, and all you want to do is sleep. But I had promises to keep, and miles to go before I could sleep. Or at least a couple of miracles to perform before I could go to bed.

Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up – some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence–that which makes its truth, its meaning–its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone.

When I do a novel, I don’t really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.

Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.

When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages–hate them to the death.

the mind of man is capable of anything–because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future

I prefer to believe the opposite – that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.

The conquest of the earth… is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only… not a sentimental pretence but an idea.

Generally in my films like Hearts of Darkness or Picture This, I try not to make myself a presence in the film.

But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.

Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness loom huge in my development as a writer. I think I’m always trying to write Heart of Darkness – trying to explode an abstraction in concrete terms, although I am aware that Conrad’s story has a bit of baggage that I’d rather avoid in my work.

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.