I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.

I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

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

The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.

There is in certain ancient things a trace
Of some dim essence --
More than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harboring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.