I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

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.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.

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.

I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.

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.

I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

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.

A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his master. Leave him alone, and he does not know what to do except bark and howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep.

Adulthood is hell.

All of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large.

All rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life and to decrease the sum total of human happiness.

An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes.

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.

Cats are the runes of beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self-sufficiency, and dainty individuality - the qualities of sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilised, master-class men.

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

Children, old crones, peasants, and dogs ramble; cats and philosophers stick to their point.

Denied anything ardently desired, the individual or state will argue and parley just so long - then, if the impelling motive be sufficiently great, will cast aside every rule and break down every acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression.

Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.

For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students.

From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.

Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear.

I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous - that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't.

I am not very proud of being an human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect.

I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream for a boarish Publick.

I could not write about 'ordinary people' because I am not in the least interested in them.

I do not think that any realism is beautiful.

I have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman and that Writing ought never to be consider'd but as an elegant Accomplishment to be indulg'd in with infrequency and Discrimination.

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.

In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence, I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.

In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs.

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day's end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may.