306 Quotes by H. P. Lovecraft

I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream for a boarish Publick.

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning, since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.

Denied anything ardently desired, the individual or state will argue and parley just so long - then, if the impelling motive be sufficiently great, will cast aside every rule and break down every acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression.

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

From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.

One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it.

Adulthood is hell.

Certain of Poe's tales possess an almost absolute perfection of artistic form which makes them veritable beacon-lights in the province of the short story.