H.P. Lovecraft

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

Alice

I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all recollection; beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess.

I told myself, I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease; but until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of Fate.

In hell there’s no innkeeper’s daughter like this!

I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.

the Pole Star, evil and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey.

We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them.

But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.

Remember we’re dealing with a hideous world in which we are practically helpless.

No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.

That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world

But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness

Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore

In that shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed hopelessly and insanely at the ebony gates of oblivion

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn

It was a peaceful Arcadian scene, but knowing what it hid I hated it. I hated the mocking moon, the hypocritical plain, the festering mountain, and those sinister mounds.

Every second I was consumed with a mixture of fear and curiosity

John Nettles

Not really Lovecraft's fault, but when I read spooky I like to be spooked all the way. While Lovecraft may have blazed the trail for contemporary horror/suspense writers, living in a Stephen King world makes it hard to go back in time, and Lovecraft never delivers that killer-clown knockout punch you crave. I don't really have this problem with Poe. Still, otherworldly, sort-of-alien-but-sort-of-demon style of Lovecraft is an amazing thing to experience.