“The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.”

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.

The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it – low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion – and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national.

My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

Of no agenor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.

Blest hour! It was a luxury–to be!

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.

There is one art of which people should be masters – the art of reflection.

Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses.

Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

This fear is one of the horrors of an author’s life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation?

I’m not a military general, a business guru, not a philosopher or author. It’s only me.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

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.