“I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.”

I do not think that any realism is beautiful.

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world’s beauty, is everything!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Truth is of no practical value to mankind save as it affects terrestrial phenomena, hence the discoveries of science should be concealed or glossed over wherever they conflict with orthodoxy.

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.

One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions. Words or compounds which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential.

The cat is classic whilst the dog is Gothic – nowhere in the animal world can we discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to function, as in the felidae.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

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.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

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

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

As a girl, my favorite toy was my dollhouse; if I could still play with it now, I would! I used to love a well-arranged room: the furniture, the fabric, the lighting.

I love to decorate a room – from the furniture to the objects to the books.

Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture.

Mary’s house smelled like lemon furniture polish and oatmeal cookies and logs in a fireplace.

You cannot separate the old furniture from the memories and the memories from the old furniture!

It is only when you put your house in order that your furniture and decorations come to life.

It’s very hard, feeling that you’re no more than a piece of unwanted furniture in this world.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.