Do not call up that which you cannot put down.
I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.
Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.
Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me.
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming.
No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
It is good to be a cynic – it is better to be a contented cat – and it is best not to exist at all.
I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.
There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.
Our brains deliberately make us forget things, to prevent insanity.
Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises...
Never Explain Anything.
I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.
Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.
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.
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 the spark of creative imagination.
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.
Pleasure to me is wonder – the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.
But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?