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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

The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Appearance Capacity Degree Demand Imagination Life Reading
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
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
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
Heaven knows where I’ll end up – but it’s a safe bet that I’ll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Care Heaven Known Myself Safety Top
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
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Animal Cat Classic Dog Hell World
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
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
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Author Competition Illusion Serious Status
The monotony of a long heroic poem may often be pleasantly relieved by judicious interruptions in the perfect succession of rhymes, just as the metre may sometimes be adorned with occasional triplets and Alexandrines.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Hero Poem Rhyme Success
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Furniture Library Live Possession Sleep
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
I do not think that any realism is beautiful.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Beautiful Realism Thinking
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More H. P. Lovecraft Quotes