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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

One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Awesome Impressive Production Terrible
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Choice Expression Feeling Group People Religious Sanity Strong Togetherness
In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Achievement Atmosphere Care Myself Place Story Weird Writing
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
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Demon Hide Known Life Ourselves Secret Truth
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
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Care Description Essential Mindset Reading Selection
I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous – that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn’t.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Accident Essential Myself Nervous People Thinking
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Horror Mistake Silence Solitude
We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Animal Black Magic Darkness Night
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Mindset Normal Religious Strict
I do not think that any realism is beautiful.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Beautiful Realism Thinking
The real lover of cats is one who demands a clearer adjustment to the universe than ordinary household platitudes provide; one who refuses to swallow the sentimental notion that all good people love dogs, children, and horses while all bad people dislike and are disliked by such.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cat Children Dog Lover Oneself Ordinary People Reality
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

Care Miss Preparation Story
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Dare Myself Place Soul
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

Appearance Chronicle Ingredient Race Terrorism

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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