The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

incurable lover of the grotesque

I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

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

Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.