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Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.

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
Take
Poet
Positively
Writing
Understood
Scenes
Would
Scene
Poets
Especial
Behinds
Letting
Peep
Behind
Intuition
Shudder
Fine
Prefer
Frenzy
Public
Species
Compose
Creative
Writers
Ecstatic

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Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.
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But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
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And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.
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In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed but to know all were the curse of a fiend
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Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
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This maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.
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When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
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The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow
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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.
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Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.
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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.
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Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. [...]
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There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.
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Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing that shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.
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Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
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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.
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But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomalyl) that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
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The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
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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.
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The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.
Edgar Allan Poe