There is a place in men's lives where pictures do in fact bleed, ghosts gibber and shriek, maidens run forever through mysterious landscapes from nameless foes; that place is, of course, the world of dreams and of the repressed guilts and fears that motivate them [i.e., the unconscious]. This world the dogmatic optimism and shallow psychology of the Age of Reason had denied; and yet this world it is the final, perhaps the essential, purpose of the gothic romance to assert. -- Fiedler, Leslie, Love and Death in the American Novel --

The element of terror is inseparably associated with the Gothic castle, which is an image of power, dark, isolated, and impenetrable. No light penetrating its impermeable walls, high and strengthened by bastions, it stands silent, lonely and sublime, frowning defiance on all who dare to invade its solitary reign. Through its dim corridors now prowl armed bandits; its halls ring with hideous revelry or anon are silent as the grave. Even when presented in decay, the castle is majestic and threatening: a spot where we encounter the mysterious and demonic beings of romance.

Frisbeetarianism is the philosophy that when you die, your soul goes up on a roof and gets stuck. -- George Carlin --