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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

All rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life and to decrease the sum total of human happiness.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Decrease Happiness Human Important Minimal Value
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Haunt Horror Search Stage
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
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
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
The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Aesthetic Perfection Scarce Symbol Worship
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Accomplishment Literature Myself Writing
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cosmic Joke Kind Man World
I am disillusioned enough to know that no man’s opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he’s talking about.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Enough Genuine Illusion Known Man Myself Opinion
Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Education Experience Genuine Imagination Potential
I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Interest Myself People Writing
I do not think that any realism is beautiful.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Beautiful Realism Thinking
My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored and listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Boredom Interest List Nervous Save System
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence, I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Appearance Atheist Rational Theory
The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere ‘assonance’ rather than that of actual rhyme.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Agreement Deserve Early Name
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!
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Beautiful Instrument Man Pay Responsive World

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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