Of What Use Is It To Please

I Expect Nothing Of Man, And Disown The Race. The Only Folly Is Expecting What Is Never Attained; Man Is Most Contemptible When Compared With His Own Pretensions. It Is Better To Laugh At Man From Outside The Universe, Than To Weep For Him Within.

I Have Harnessed The Shadows That Stride From World To World To Sow Death And Madness.

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.

In My Actual Imaginative Contact With Life, I Am Vastly More Responsive To Beauty Than To Horror - Indeed, I Never Experience Real Cosmic Horror Except In Infrequent Nightmares. However, When I Come To Record My Various Imaginative Experiences, I Generally Find That Only The Horror Items Have Any Uniqueness Or Originality. Others Have Seen The Same Beautiful Things That I Have Seen, & Have Sung Them More Nobly.

The One Test Of The Really Weird (story) Is Simply This--whether Or Not There Be Excited In The Reader A Profound Sense Of Dread, And Of Contact With Unknown Spheres And Powers; A Subtle Attitude Of Awed Listening, As If For The Beating Of Black Wings Or The Scratching Of Outside Shapes And Entities On The Known Universe's Utmost Rim.