Born: November 8, 1847 | Died: April 20, 1912
Nationality: Irish | Genre: Classic Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Horror
Bram Stoker was an Irish writer best known for Dracula (1897), the famous tale of the vampire Count. He grew up in Dublin, studied at Trinity College, and worked as a civil servant and a journalist before moving to London. There he managed the Lyceum Theatre for the actor Henry Irving, a job that taught him about mood, staging, and drama—skills he later brought into his fiction. Dracula is told through diaries, letters, and news clippings, which makes the strange events feel real and close.
Stoker wrote other dark adventures, like The Jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, and he kept publishing stories and essays throughout his life. He married Florence Balcombe and had one son. Quiet and steady in person, he had a strong feel for fear, suspense, and the hidden corners of the human heart. His work helped shape modern horror, and Dracula still sets the standard for how we imagine vampires today.
Listen to them—the children of the night; what music they make! The wolves are not to me as they are to other men. To them the night is freedom and food; to me it is kinship and home, and I have learned to love their voices as a man loves his own blood.
fromDraculabyNo man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be; the very light seems to wash the brain clean, as if thought itself had been stained by the dark.
fromDraculabyI think we are drifting into deep waters where charts do not guide, and only the stars of faith and friendship can be trusted. If we lose those, we are lost indeed.
fromDraculabyWe women are not cowards. We think, and we wait, and we work; and sometimes our waiting and our working save lives, though we do not go out with swords. If there is darkness, let me be of use in it, for courage is not only a man’s.
fromDraculabyNo one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart, and he had no one to comfort him.
fromDraculabyI am all in a sea of wonders; I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not tell to my own soul. And yet I must not be weak; there is work for me to do, and others to help, and I will be of use.
fromDraculabyYour girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine. Love has made you weak, and weakness is my road. I enter by the heart, and from there I make a home.
fromDraculabyRemember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.`
fromDraculabyWe learn from failure, not from success; and our failures have taught us to believe the strange evidence of our eyes, and to act together without delay. We have been blind, but now we must keep notes, keep watch, and keep faith, for there are no little things in great affairs.
fromDraculabyThere is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.
fromDraculabyI sometimes think we must be mad that we do not flee from this house; but we are men, and must do our duty though it be a dreadful one. We are all drifting in strange seas, and the lights we trust are faint and far; yet, if we hold together and keep our heads clear, the dawn will find us.
fromDraculaby