As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of ZAR, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of the ocean.

— H.P. Lovecraft

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Prime emphasis should be given to subtle suggestion - imperceptible hints and touches of selective associative detail which express shadings of mood and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal. Avoid bald catalogs of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of color and symbolism.

— H.P. Lovecraft

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

— H.P. Lovecraft

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark mobilities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.

— H.P. Lovecraft

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?

— H.P. Lovecraft

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

By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins.

— H.P. Lovecraft

By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran which slope down to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness wherein the King of Ilk-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once a year in a golden palanquin to pray to the god of Outranks, who sang to him in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All jasper is that temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts, its seven pinnacle towers, and its inner shrine where the river enters through hidden channels and the god sings softly in the night. Many times the moon hears strange music as it shines on those courts and terraces and pinnacles, but whether that music is the song of the god or the chant of the critical priests, none but the King of Ilk-Vad may say; for only he had entered the temple or seen the priests. Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carved and delicate fine was silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream and the hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted sun.

— H.P. Lovecraft

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.”— “Supernatural Horror in Literature

— H.P. Lovecraft

Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferent- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

— H.P. Lovecraft