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A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe
Age: 40 †
Born: 1809
Born: January 19
Died: 1849
Died: October 7
Author
Crime Writer
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Lyricist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Poe
Edgar Poe
E. A. Poe
Story
Insightful
Stories
Sentence
Must
Sentences
Writing
Mood
Every
Towards
Build
Short
Single

More quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

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The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.
Edgar Allan Poe
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A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.
Edgar Allan Poe
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My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design.
Edgar Allan Poe
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...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel
Edgar Allan Poe
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As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.
Edgar Allan Poe
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There might be a class of beings, human once, but now to humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny, and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had been set in order by God the great landscape-garden of the whole earth.
Edgar Allan Poe
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I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
Edgar Allan Poe
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I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. Death, I said, any death but that of the pit! Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
Edgar Allan Poe
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When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The best things in life make you sweaty.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.
Edgar Allan Poe
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I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of respectability in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.
Edgar Allan Poe
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For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.
Edgar Allan Poe
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And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Edgar Allan Poe
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In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
Edgar Allan Poe
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To see distinctly the machinery--the wheels and pinions--of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.
Edgar Allan Poe
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In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author in perusing others, exclusively with our own.
Edgar Allan Poe