I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

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.

It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.

Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.