All great humorists are sad... I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest - the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind. — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre "kick". Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly,… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
“Sounds—possibly musical—heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being.” — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts. — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
It's not a bad idea to call this Cthulhuism & Yog-Sothothery of mine "The Mythology of Hastur" - although it was really from Machen & Dunsany & others, rather than through the Bierce-Chambers line, that I picked up my gradually developing hash of theogony - or daimonogony. Come to think of it, I guess I sling this stuff more as… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share
The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Nothing is really typical of my efforts... I'm simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Thus I began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth's narrow, shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward the roar of the lower… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals - for all that is admirable in man is the… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
“How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquility!” — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
Plots may be simple or complex, but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. Every incident in a fictional work… — H. P. Lovecraft Copy Share Image
