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Quote by H. P. Lovecraft

Work

The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

This annotated volume offers readers a detailed exploration of the supernatural horror genre, including extensive commentary and analysis of key texts. It brings together a selection of classic stories and poems that have shaped the genre, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the literary elements and themes that define supernatural horror. more

Author

H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft was an American horror fiction writer known for his unique cosmic horror style and Gothic narrative. His works often explore the insignificance of humans in the face of the unknown and omnipotent forces, profoundly influencing horror literature in the second half of the 20th century. more

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“We must recognise the essential underlaying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defense. We must realise that man's nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake.”

“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 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 every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience.”

“It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.”

“No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood.”