Quotes from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“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, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me creak slowly open upon its rusted hinges.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“But of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“The strange things of the past which I learnt during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness. But”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“My eldest cat, “Nigger-Man,” was seven years old and had come with me from my home in Bolton, Massachusetts;”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“I recognized the ugly and unwieldy form of the cook, whose very absurdness had now become unutterably tragic. The”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres?”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Now, as the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings circles closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnamable.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“many pairs of legs and with two great bat-like wings in the middle of the back. They sometimes walked on all their legs, and sometimes on the hindmost pair only, using the others to convey large objects of indeterminate nature. On one occasion they were spied in considerable numbers, a detachment of them wading along a shallow woodland watercourse three abreast in evidently disciplined formation. Once a specimen was seen flying—launching itself from the top of a bald, lonely hill at night and vanishing in the sky after its great flapping wings had been silhouetted an instant against the full moon. These”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“It is no news to me that tales of hidden races are as old as all mankind.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass in its low-studded monotony as though I saw it.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“It happened in June, about the anniversary of the meteor’s fall, and the poor woman screamed about things in the air which she could not describe.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“the trees would die before the poison was out of the soil.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown. Hot”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“I recognised the air—it was a wild Hungarian dance popular in the theatres, and I reflected for a moment that this was the first time I had ever heard Zann play the work of another composer.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“the real thing behind the way folks feel is simply race prejudice—and I don’t say I’m blaming those that hold it.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“The region now entered by the police was one of traditionally evil repute, substantially unknown and untraversed by white men.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“nearly a hundred mongrel celebrants in the throng, the police relied on their firearms and plunged determinedly into the nauseous rout.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands,”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“it was hard to leave a place where all one’s memories and ancestral feelings centred. Before”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

“I saw the sun peering redly through the last gusts of a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city, and marked the quietness of the rest of the landscape.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

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“I slammed the water off hard enough to make it clack, got out of the shower, dried, and started getting dressed in a fresh set of secondhand clothes.
“Why do you wear those?” asked Lacuna.
I jumped, stumbled, and shouted half of a word to a spell, but since I was only halfway done putting on my underwear, I mostly just fell on my naked ass.
“Gah!” I said. “Don’t do that!”
My miniature captive came to the edge of the dresser and peered down at me.
“Don’t ask questions?”
“Don’t come in here all quiet and spooky and scare me like that!”
“You’re six times my height, and fifty times my weight,” Lacuna said gravely. “And I’ve agreed to be your captive. You don’t have any reason to be afraid.”
“Not afraid,” I snapped back. “Startled. It isn’t wise to startle a wizard!”
“Why not?”
“Because of what could happen!”
“Because they might fall down on the floor?”
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Lacuna frowned and said, “You aren’t very good at answering questions.” I started shoving myself into my clothes. “I’m starting to agree with you.”
“So why do you wear those?” I blinked.
“Clothes?”
“Yes. You don’t need them unless it’s cold or raining.”
“You’re wearing clothes.”
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“No, it won’t.” I sighed.
Lacuna peered at my shirt. “Aer-O-Smith. Arrowsmith. Does the shirt belong to your weapon dealer?”
“No.”
“Then why do you wear the shirt of someone else’s weapon dealer?” That was frustrating in so many ways that I could avoid a stroke only by refusing to engage. “Lacuna,” I said, “humans wear clothes. It’s one of the things we do. And as long as you are in my service, I expect you to do it as well.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I  .  .  . I  .  .  . might pull your arms out of your sockets.” At that, she frowned. “Why?”
“Because I have to maintain discipline, don’t I?”
“True,” she said gravely. “But I have no clothes.”
I counted to ten mentally. “I’ll  .  .  . find something for you. Until then, no desocketing. Just wear the armor. Fair enough?” Lacuna bowed slightly at the waist. “I understand, my lord.”
“Good.” I sighed. I flicked a comb through my wet hair, for all the good it would do, and said, “How do I look?” “Mostly human,” she said.
“That’s what I was going for.”
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Lacuna looked confused. “I did. Just now. You were there.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have brain damage.”
“It would not shock me in the least,” I said.
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Someone that short should not be that disturbing. “I  .  .  . No. No, but thank you for the offer.”
“It is my duty to serve,” Lacuna intoned.
My life, Hell’s bells.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Cold Days

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