“How certain are you, anyhow, that what you call ‘unpleasantness’ is not a necessary, even crucial, part of our experience?
Maybe you should lock yourself up in your heart long enough to work out your actual relationship to matters like shame, loss, envy, panic, brutality, greed, insecurity, loneliness, failure, whatever you find particularly unpleasant. Because that, dimwit, is where you live, especially if you really hate the whole idea of familiarity with such crappy, low-rent feeling states.”
At The Millions author Peter Straub makes a strong case for taking horror as seriously as anything else.
