Happy indeed is that town which grew slowly enough to leave traces of the gradual evolution from year to year, and gently enough to preserve the original topographical lines of hill and shore -- the lines that are graceful because born of Nature, and that find embodiment in curved streets, quaint slopes or flights of steps, simple and dignify'd bridges, sea-walls, and embankments, quiet nooks and terraces, and all other vestiges which show man's conformity to Nature rather than man's artificial conquest of Nature by prosaic, repudiatory feats of engineering.
In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, January 26 1924
If these ancient spots were fascinating in the busy hours of twilight, fancy their utter and poignant charm in the sinister hours before dawn, when only cats, criminals, astronomers, and poetic antiquarians roam the waking world!
In a letter to Mrs F.C. Clark, September 29-30 1924
The town, brooding quietly in the Sabbath radiance despite the herds of sightseers unloos'd upon it, does not at first impress one. The Monument is so distant, the sky so vacant of tall buildings, and the ground so devoted to parks, malls, and wide spaces, that one cannot gather the sense of compact and active life which one usually associates with large cities.
Describing Washington DC, in a letter to Mrs F.C. Clark, April 21 1925
During this hospital period I had my first experience in lone housekeeping. Aided by the written instructions of my wife I made coffee that I could actually drink, and cooked spaghetti that I could actually eat -- and as a matter of personal pride I kept the house swept and dusted.
In a letter to Maurice W. Moe, June 15 1925
Reaching the farmhouse by motor from the station, we found it quite tolerable though somewhat lonely; and to my mind vastly enhanced by the lively presence of a large family of irresistible gray kittens.
In a letter to Maurice W. Moe, June 15 1925
I like a tale to be told as directly and impersonally as possible, from an angle of utter and absolute detachment.
In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, August 2 1925
It so happens that I am unable to take pleasure or interest in anything but a mental re-creation of other & better days ... so in order to avoid the madness which leads to violence & suicide I must cling to the few shreds of old days & old ways which are left to me.
In a letter to an unknown correspondent, August 8 1925
Yes -- such sensitivenesses of temperament are very inconvenient when one has no money -- but it's easier to criticise than to cure them.
In a letter to an unknown correspondent, August 8 1925
As I have always said, missionaries are infernal nuisances who ought to be kept at home -- dull, solemn asses without scientific acumen or historical perspective ...
In a letter to Mrs F.C. Clark, September 12-13 1925
When my stuff is done it always disappoints me -- never quite presenting the fulness of the picture I have in mind -- but since a crude fixation of the image is better than nothing, I plug along & do the feeble best I can.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, September 20 1925
Peste! Sacrebleu! Nom d'un Cochon vert! O Saint Dieu et Notre Dame de Montreal! THIS GAWD-DAMN COLD!!!
In a letter to James F. Morton, November 1925
Ineffective & injudicious I may be, but I trust I may never be inartistic or ill-bred in my course of conduct.
In a letter to an unknown correspondent, December 22-23 1925
Possess, O Flambeau of Patersonic Tenebrosity, a cardiac organ; and heap upon my valueless cranium the carbonaceous symbols of Eblis' aeternal conflagrations!
In a letter to James F. Morton, January 5 1926
Nothing really matters, and the only thing for a person to do is to take the artificial and traditional values he finds around him and pretend they are real; in order to retain that illusion of significance in life which gives to human events their apparent motivation and semblance of interest.
In a letter to Walter J. Coates, March 30 1926
Yrs. for ghouls, afreets, and undertakers--
Sign-off from a letter to Wilfred Blanch Talman, April 23 1926
As to Long's notion that your work systematically contains phallic symbolism -- he picked that up at second-hand from Loveman, who seems to have done enough delving in that line to see phalli in most things from church steeples to mushrooms.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, May 14 1926
It's a pretty old world, after all, & we shall never learn much about the inner nature of things...
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, May 14 1926
You poets can't age -- split me, Sir, if Samuelus isn't a flaming youth still from all his barren pole and uncertain equator!
In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, June 1926
As to what is meant by "weird" -- and of course weirdness is by no means confined to horror -- I should say that the real criterion is a strong impression of the suspension of natural laws or the presence of unseen worlds or forces close at hand.
In a letter to Wilfred Blanch Talman, August 24 1926
Besides the aesthetic, you have managed to work in the practical -- which is always a sealed mystery to me.
In a letter to Wilfred Blanch Talman, September 8 1926
I imagine that Wandrei must be rather a young chap -- though possessed of a fund of imagery & command of language which will serve him well when he has learnt the lessons of restraint & austerity of form form which come with later life.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, October 12 1926
I can't get interested in it -- it doesn't even bore me enough to take my mind off other boredoms.
In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, October 26 1926
This primary attention to plot is probably a wise choice on your part, because to the weird writer plot is so much more difficult to achieve than atmosphere.
In a letter to Wilfred Blanch Talman, October 31 1926
But in the end, atmosphere repays cultivation; because it is the final criterion of convincingness or unconvincingness in any tale whose major appeal is to the imagination.
In a letter to Wilfred Blanch Talman, October 31 1926
And to think I read them ----- ----- proofs five ----- ----- times!
In a letter to James F. Morton, November 17 1926
As to eyeshades and reversed caps -- you can't convince me that either or both is or are (a) worth getting indignant or critical about, or (b) any more foolish than dozens of other accepted customs.
In a letter to James F. Morton, November 17 1926
Everything in the world outside primitive needs is the chance result of inessential causes and random associations, and there's no real or solid criterion by which one can condemn any particular manifestation of human restlessness.
In a letter to James F. Morton, November 17 1926
In the more southerly portions the very earth sparkles with some shining powder that the fanciful would call star dust -- but which I, as a veteran mineralogist, know must come from the oxydising up of the neighbouring rocks -- which have mica or something. Being exceedingly charitable where expense is not involved, I herewith enclose a very modest specimen as a nucleus of the Theobald Collection of American Rocks, for which I shall expect a special wing to be built at the museum.
In a letter to James F. Morton, November 26 1926
All we may say is, that the more purely an aesthete a man is, the more likely he is to prefer cats; since the superior grace, beauty, manners and neatness of the cat cannot but conquer the fancy of any impartial observer emancipated from mundane and ethical illusions.
In a letter to James F. Morton, December 1926
We love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and we don't give a damn whether they or we are superior or inferior! They're confounded pretty, and that's all we know and all we need to know!
In a letter to James F. Morton, December 1926
You can get a fairly good bird's-eye view of literary modernism by reading Ben Hecht's Erik Dorn for prose, and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land for what purports to be verse.
In a letter to August Derleth, January 2 1927
About Oscar Wilde -- it seems to me that he forms a prominent point in the history of literature without having been supremely great himself.
In a letter to August Derleth, January 20 1927
No -- New York is dead, & the brilliancy which so impresses one from outside is the phosphoresence of a maggoty corpse.
In a letter to Donald Wandrei, February 10 1927
Sterling was a real poet, & the fact of his not fitting the age is purely the age's fault.
In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, February 18 1927
By this time I see pretty well what I'm driving at and how I'm doing it -- that I'm a rather one-sided person whose only really burning interests are the past and the unknown or the strange, and whose aestheticism in general is more negative than positive -- i.e., a hatred of ugliness rather than an active love of beauty.
In a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer, March 3 1927
I abhor broad prosaic highways with their implications of change, modernity, and decadence, and make for the calm, untainted inner countryside whenever I possibly can.
In a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer, March 3 1927
I conceived the idea that the great brownstone house was a malignly sentient thing -- a dead, vampire creature which sucked something out of those within it and implanted in them the seeds of some horrible and immaterial psychic growth.
In a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer, March 26 1927
It is the frank & cynical recognition of the inevitable limitations of people in general which makes me absolutely indifferent instead of actively hostile toward mankind.
In a letter to Donald Wandrei, March 27 1927