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The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.

H. P. Lovecraft

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H. P. Lovecraft
Age: 46 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 20
Died: 1937
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft
Ward Phillips
HP Lovecraft
Richard Raleigh
Edgar Softly
Augustus T. Swift
Lewis Theobald
Jr.
Albert Frederick Willie
Humphrey Littlewit
Demand
Appeal
Capacity
Narrow
Reader
Appeals
Imagination
Demands
Certain
Degree
Life
Generally
Degrees
Macabre
Everyday
Detachment

More quotes by H. P. Lovecraft

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I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do.
H. P. Lovecraft
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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.
H. P. Lovecraft
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To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred?
H. P. Lovecraft
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Vigorous let us be in attaining our ends, and mild in our method of attainment.
H. P. Lovecraft
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That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.
H. P. Lovecraft
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The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods.
H. P. Lovecraft
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No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it--and I have not that drive except where violations of the natural order ... defiances and evasions of time, space, and cosmic law ... are concerned.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.
H. P. Lovecraft
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There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.
H. P. Lovecraft
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In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I felt myself on the edge of the world peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.
H. P. Lovecraft
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In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I am a student of life, and don't want to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know--or perhaps you don't know, but it's all the same.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.
H. P. Lovecraft
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But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H. P. Lovecraft
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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.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.
H. P. Lovecraft
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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.
H. P. Lovecraft
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The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
H. P. Lovecraft