H. P. Lovecraft

Adulthood is hell.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Life is a hideous thing.

— H. P. Lovecraft

I do not think that any realism is beautiful.

— H. P. Lovecraft

I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

— H. P. Lovecraft

The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

— H. P. Lovecraft

The cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you.

— H. P. Lovecraft

“Who are we to combat poisons older than history and mankind?”

— H. P. Lovecraft

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.

— 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

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

— H. P. Lovecraft

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

— H. P. Lovecraft

If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

— H. P. Lovecraft

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

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

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

— H. P. Lovecraft

Never should an unfamiliar word be passed over without elucidation, for, with a little conscientious research, we may each day add to…

— H. P. Lovecraft

In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an…

— H. P. Lovecraft

All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost.…

— H. P. Lovecraft

A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of…

— H. P. Lovecraft

Most of my monsters fail altogether to satisfy my sense of the cosmic - the abnormally chromatic entity in The Colour Out…

— H. P. Lovecraft

I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to…

— H. P. Lovecraft

There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought tp stand…

— H. P. Lovecraft

Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me…

— H. P. Lovecraft

The phenomenon of dreaming ... helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world; and in general, all the…

— H. P. Lovecraft

I can look back . . . at two distinct periods of opinion whose foundations I have successively come to distrust -…

— H. P. Lovecraft

Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct…

— H. P. Lovecraft

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought…

— H. P. Lovecraft

There are, I think, four distinct types of weird story: one expressing a mood or feeling, another expressing a pictorial conception, a…

— H. P. Lovecraft

When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely…

— H. P. Lovecraft

My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to…

— H. P. Lovecraft

All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or…

— H. P. Lovecraft

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

— H. P. Lovecraft

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

— H. P. Lovecraft

In London there is a man who screams when the church bells ring.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Do not call up that which you cannot put down.

— H. P. Lovecraft

The greatest human achievements have never been for profit.

— H. P. Lovecraft