There's something about autumn that puts us in the mood to curl up inside and get cozy. Maybe it's the cooling of the air and the changing of the leaves. Or maybe it's the anticipation of Halloween, the one night a year when the portal between the living and dead supposedly opens up and we respond by dressing up and gorging on candy. No time like the present, right?

Whatever it is, spooky season is fun. Carving pumpkins, making costumes, decorating the house for your Halloween party— there's so much preparation for one of the best nights of the entire year. You have some sleepless nights to look forward to, no doubt, whether that's from too much sugar or too many horror films. To get you and your social media feed into the spooky spirit, we've rounded up 44 of the best Halloween quotes to inspire absolutely spellbinding Instagram captions this year.

Listen to our haunted house podcast, Dark House, to get some authentic thrills and chills while you decorate.

Quotes About Halloween

  • "I love Halloween, and I love that feeling: the cold air, the spooky dangers lurking around the corner.” —Evan Peters
  • "When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ''Tis near Halloween.'" — Unknown
  • "Every day is Halloween, isn't it? For some of us." —Tim Burton
  • "Some people are born for Halloween, and some are just counting the days until Christmas." —Stephen Graham Jones
  • "Halloween was the best holiday, in my opinion, because it was all about friends, monsters, and candy, rather than family and responsibility." —Margee Kerr
  • "She'd always loved Halloween. A magic night. A night when anything could happen. Monsters could be real. Magic could whisper in the air." —Cynthia Eden
  • "There is magic in the night when pumpkins glow by moonlight." —Unknown
  • "It's a full moon tonight. That's when all the weirdos are out. —Dani, Hocus Pocus
  • "Halloween shadows played upon the walls of the houses. In the sky, the Halloween moon raced in and out of the clouds…It was a lovely and exciting night, exactly the kind of night Halloween should be." —Eleanor Estes
  • "The farther we've gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we've come to need Halloween." —Paula Curan
  • "The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves." —Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
  • "Anything could move out there in the darkness, I think. A hook-handed man. A ghostly hitchhiker forever repeating the same journey. An old woman summoned from the repose of her mirror by the chants of children. Everyone knows these stories—that is, everyone tells them, even if they don't know them—but no one ever believes them." —Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties
  • "What he was scared of was not that maybe she was a creature who survived by drinking other people's blood. No, it was that she might push him away.” —John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In
  • "'Fear,' the doctor said, 'is the relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.'" —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
  • "Halloween is a celebration of the inversion of reality and a necessary gothic hat-tip to the darker aspects of life, death, and ourselves." —Stewart Stafford
  • "She used to tell me that a full moon was when mysterious things happen and wishes come true." —Shannon A. Thompson

Cute Halloween Quotes

  • "Halloween is not only about putting on a costume, but it's about finding the imagination and costume within ourselves." —Elvis Duran
  • "Halloween wraps fear in innocence, as though it were a slightly sour sweet. Let terror, then, be turned into a treat." —Nicholas Gordon
  • "Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story." —Mason Cooley
  • "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." —L.M. Montgomery
  • "Magic is really very simple, all you've got to do is want something and then let yourself have it." —Maggie Cromwell, Halloweentown
  • "My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." —Aunt Francis, Practical Magic

Funny Halloween Quotes

  • "Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, 'Never take candy from strangers.' And then they dressed me up and said, 'Go beg for it.'" —Rita Rudner
  • "Everyone here knows that Halloween was invented by the candy companies. It's a conspiracy." —Max, Hocus Pocus
  • “It's Halloween; everyone's entitled to one good scare." —Brackett, Halloween
  • "I'm guessing Angela's the one in the neighborhood who gives the trick-or-treaters some toothbrushes. Pennies. Walnuts." —Pam Beesly, The Office
  • "Charlie Brown is the one person I identify with. C.B. is such a loser. He wasn't even the star of his own Halloween special." —Chris Rock
  • "Nothing so beautiful on earth as the final haul on Halloween night.” —Steve Almond
  • "I see my face in the mirror and go, 'I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?'" —Drew Carey
  • "There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." —Linus, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Scary Halloween Quotes

  • "We ask only to be reassured/ About the noises in the cellar/ And the windows that should not have been open." —T.S. Elliot
  • "A mask tells us more than a face." —Oscar Wilde
  • "Shadows mutter, mist replies; darkness purrs as midnight sighs." —Rusty Fischer
  • "Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, voices whisper in the trees, 'Tonight is Halloween!'" —Dexter Kozen
  • "They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy both. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creepy, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run water. The spiderweb hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them." —Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
  • "One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material place." —Emily Dickinson
  • "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good." —William Shakespeare, Macbeth
  • "Not in the dark. No, sir. Not on Halloween." —The Gravedigger, Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
  • "On Halloween, witches come true; wild ghosts escape from dreams. Each monster dances in the park." —Nicholas Gordon
  • "Be afraid…Be very afraid." —The Fly
  • "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." —William Shakespeare, The Tempest
  • "There is something haunting in the light of the moon." —Joseph Conrad
  • "A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Tried, anger, guilt. But in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see." —Steven, The Haunting of Hill House
  • "You should never poison a witch." —Kelly Link, Get in Trouble
Headshot of Kate McGregor
Kate McGregor

Kate McGregor is House Beautiful’s SEO Editor. She has covered everything from curated decor round-ups and shopping guides, to glimpses into the home lives of inspiring creatives, for publications such as ELLE Decor, Domino, and Architectural Digest’s Clever.