Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Robert Bloch—best known for horror and macabre fiction—was frequently introduced in interviews and convention appearances as a writer with a “ghoulish” imagination. This quip belongs to his public persona: a practiced, after-dinner style of humor used to deflate the expectation that horror writers are themselves sinister. The line plays on the cliché “the heart of a small boy” (meaning innocence or sentimentality) and twists it into a literal, grotesque image, aligning with Bloch’s brand of dark comedy and the showman’s patter common in mid-to-late 20th-century genre circles.

The joke hinges on a bait-and-switch. The first sentence invokes a familiar sentimental cliché (“the heart of a small boy”) meant to reassure listeners that the speaker is gentle despite a dark reputation. The second sentence abruptly literalizes the metaphor—turning “heart” into a grotesque specimen “in a jar”—and thereby reasserts the horror writer’s identity. Bloch’s humor works as a commentary on audience expectations: people want the creator of frightening stories to be harmless in private, yet they also relish the frisson of imagining him as slightly monstrous. The line neatly fuses genial self-parody with a macabre punchline.

Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.
I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.
I have the heart of a small boy—somewhere in a jar on my desk.