H. P. LOVECRAFT

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

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.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

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.

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.

If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.

I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

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.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

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.

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

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!

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

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.

Of our relation to all creation we can never know anything whatsoever. All is immensity and chaos. But, since all this knowledge of our limitations cannot possibly be of any value to us, it is better to ignore it in our daily conduct of life.

Plots may be simple or complex, but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. Every incident in a fictional work should have some bearing on the climax or denouement, and any denouement which is not the inevitable result of the preceding incidents is awkward and unliterary.