[GirlyGirlMask]

Others have already touched on this, but the word "decay" always comes to mind when I ponder Ligotti.

Crashing waves near a seaside town sound like decaying radio static. An aging author's face or "ancient mask" is devoured by the starving shadows of time. A town's façade is repeatedly torn away and rebuilt. A mysterious scarecrow even seems to magically affect the natural stages of decomposition. And, of course, in nearly every protagonist there is a kind of decay of the psyche--- sanity itself becomes frayed and fragmented.

I don't know this to be the case, but I imagine Ligotti as a man who is frightened by the ravenous appetite of time, and of the natural decay we see all around us as things grow old and die. I think many horror authors fear death, and that their imaginations are a kind of coping mechanism, although this may or may not be the case with Thomas Ligotti.