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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.

H. P. Lovecraft

The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point, primitive will or desire cannot be curbed.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Culture Desire Honor Man Nation
Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Chaos Color Different Inspirational Ocean Silence
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

Connection Emotion Fear Horror Lay Natural Unknown
All of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cosmos Emotion Fundamental
Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species – if separate species we be – for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Horror Oppression Science Ultimate World
The ‘punch’ of a truly weird tale is simply some violation or transcending of fixed cosmic law – an imaginative escape from palling reality – hence, phenomena rather than persons are the logical ‘heroes.’
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Escape Phenomena Reality Story Tale Transcendence Weird
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Horror Mistake Silence Solitude
I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Interest Myself People Writing
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Emotion Fear Feeling Kind Man Old Strong Unknown
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Dreams Mindset Myself Writing
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Mindset Normal Religious Strict
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Aristotle Establishment Poetry Principle Pronounce
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Amusement Boredom Himself Polite Throw
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Black Ignorance Live Ourselves Travel
If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Creation Ideal Myself Taste World
Write out the story – rapidly, fluently, and not too critically – following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Change Design Development Follow Story Writing

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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