Quotes from L. Sprague de Camp

There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.

Speech sounds can be analyzed into fundamental units called phonemes; these move around like protozoa in a drop of water, and, like protozoa, join together and split up.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.

There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just learned that his brain child is a deformed idiot.

There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.

The spook begins to interfere with the writer's normal mental processes. Sometimes the ghost, by appealing to the writer's sympathies, tempts the writer to imitate him in one way or another. Catherine says that, when I was working on Lovecraft, I even began to dress in the style affected by HPL, like that of a well-bred undertaker.

From 1909 to 1914, Lovecraft turned from adolescent to adult; but his life during this period is an almost utter blank. Apparently he sat at home, day after day, staying up most of the night and in bed all morning, reading voraciously, writing reams of Georgian poetry, and doing little else.

It is said that the mother of King George III told him: "George, be king!" and that many of this well-meaning but far from brilliant monarch's troubles stemmed from trying to obey her. Likewise, Susie Lovecraft in effect told her son: "Be a gentleman!" She succeeded in making him into a lifelong snob

Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold. Would set him dancing. Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors. EDWIN A. ROBINSON

In his last years, Lovecraft dropped practically all his ethnic phobias and denounced the very opinions he had earlier flaunted.

liquor and loquacity are your besetting weaknesses.

On July 6, 1906, Lovecraft acquired a used Remington typewriter. He never, however, took the next logical step: to learn to type by touch. All his life, he typed with his two forefingers, as did many writers of his generation like H. L. Mencken.

Now, Lovecraft was notoriously fond of sweets. He consumed vast quantities of chocolate and ice cream; he so saturated his coffee with sugar that a sticky mass was left in the cup. If he was hyperinsulinic, such a practice was guaranteed to cause a collapse of the kind he told about.

Well, at least measure your drinks,- liquor and loquacity are your besetting weaknesses.

He seems to have developed a rare, little-understood affliction called poikilothermism. The victim loses the normal mammalian ability to keep his body temperature constant, regardless of changes in the ambient temperature. His body assumes the temperature of its surroundings, as if he were a reptile or a fish.

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.