I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

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

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

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

In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.

A short story is "a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal...having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out.