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" I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors. "

H. P. Lovecraft

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" The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. "

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" No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce. "

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" To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth. "

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" That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish. "

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" I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. "

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" One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about. "

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" Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and shambles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. "

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" There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street. "

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" Adulthood is hell. "

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" The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere 'assonance' rather than that of actual rhyme. "

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" Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity. "

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" Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder, I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" I have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman and that Writing ought never to be consider'd but as an elegant Accomplishment to be indulg'd in with infrequency and Discrimination. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" There are, I think, four distinct types of weird story: one expressing a mood or feeling, another expressing a pictorial conception, a third expressing a general situation, condition, legend or intellectual conception, and a fourth explaining a definite tableau or specific dramatic situation or climax. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Never should an unfamiliar word be passed over without elucidation, for, with a little conscientious research, we may each day add to our conquests in the realm of philology and become more and more ready for graceful independent expression. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Children, old crones, peasants, and dogs ramble; cats and philosophers stick to their point. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" It would not be amiss for the novice to write the last paragraph of his story first, once a synopsis of the plot has been carefully prepared - as it always should be. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. "

H. P. Lovecraft

" Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. "

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" Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason. "

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" We should perceive that man's period of historical existence, a period so short that his physical constitution has not been altered in the slightest degree, is insufficient to allow of any considerable mental change. "

H. P. Lovecraft