Edgar Allan Poe

If you determine to abandon me — here take I my farewell — Neglected — I will be doubly ambitious, & the world shall hear of the son whom you have thought unworthy of your notice.

In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque; the fearful coloured into the horrible; the witty exaggerated into the burlesque; the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical. You may say all this is bad taste. ... But whether the articles of which I speak are, or are not in bad taste is little to the purpose. To be appreciated you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

The author avers upon his word of honor that in commencing this work he loads a pistol, and places it upon the table.

Of course, that he is a poetical phenomenon, as entirely without fault, as is the luxurious paper upon which his poems are invariably borne to the public eye.

To the poet himself we have only to say-from any farther specimens of your stupidity, good Lord deliver us!

Grin: — Your true diddler winds up all with a grin. But this nobody sees but himself. He grins when his daily work is done — when his allotted labors are accomplished — at night in his own closet, and altogether for his own private entertainment. He goes home. He locks his door. He divests himself of his clothes. He puts out his candle. He gets into bed. He places his head upon the pillow. All this done, and your diddler grins.

The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us, (for a brief period, at least) are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, persons of mere address, perseverance, effrontery—in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks.

He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling.

There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

An agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity...

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.

Almighty God! —no, no! They heard! —they suspected! —they knew! —they were making a mockery of my horror! —this I thought, and this I think.

It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

It is with literature as with law or empire – an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.