H. P. Lovecraft Quotes about Writing

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.

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.

H. P. Lovecraft

Book, Writing, Solitary Life

H.P. Lovecraft (2008). “Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.549, Hachette UK

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

H. P. Lovecraft

Writing, People, Ordinary

H. P. Lovecraft (2000). “The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature”, Hippocampus

There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

H. P. Lovecraft

Writing, Self, Expression

H. P. Lovecraft (2000). “The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature”, Hippocampus

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

H. P. Lovecraft

Inspiration, Writing, Night

H.P. Lovecraft, Steven Jones, Philip (2017). “H.P. Lovecraft's Worlds - Volume Two: Dagon and Other Tales”, p.3, Caliber Comics

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.

H. P. Lovecraft

Writing, Drug, Tonight

H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “Dagon”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe's will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.

H. P. Lovecraft

Powerful, Writing, Style

H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ Ultimate Collection: 120+ Works ALL in One Volume: Complete Novellas & Short Stories, Juvenilia, Poetry, Essays & Collaborations: The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Outsider, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Cats of Ultharäó_”, p.1401, e-artnow

Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.

H. P. Lovecraft

Real, Writing, Artist

H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories”, p.46, H. P. Lovecraft

One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.

H. P. Lovecraft

Real, Writing, Race

Letter to "Weird Tales" editor Edwin Baird, printed in "Weird Tales" 3, no. 3 (March 1924); Quoted in "Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters" edited by S. T. Joshi, (p. 122), 2000.

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

H. P. Lovecraft

Dream, Real, Writing

H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.

H. P. Lovecraft

Drama, Writing, Trying

Letter to E. Hoffman Price (29 September 1933), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 579), 1996.

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

H. P. Lovecraft

Art, Writing, Sight

H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

H. P. Lovecraft

Mean, Writing, Reality

H. P. Lovecraft Quotes about Writing

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