Horrors, I believe, should be original – the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.
H. P. LOVECRAFTHorror 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.
More H. P. Lovecraft Quotes
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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.
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I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.
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All rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life and to decrease the sum total of human happiness.
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To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
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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.
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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.
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Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
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Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.
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The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.
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From my experience, I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking.
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The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
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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.’
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Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.
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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.
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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