Quotes from Robert E. Howard

Down the mountain slopes, like a whirl of shining dust blown before the wind, a crimson, conoid cloud came dancing. Khemsa's dark face turned ashen; his hand began to tremble, then sank to his side. The girl beside him, sensing the change in him, stared at him inquiringly.

Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Belit, queen of the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love! Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I am a queen by fire and steel and slaughter–be thou my king!

Virgin-white she was, and her arms were folded across her still bosom; calm was her face, and the gray tides sighed about her slender limbs.

There was no explaining this thing, but it was so. he was on Xapur, and that fantastic heap of towering masonry was on Xapur, and all was madness and paradox; yet it was all true.

You low-down land-sharks," I roared. "You doped my grog!

Me estremecí al imaginar el insondable abismo de tiempo que se abre entre el presente y aquella época en que la tierra se estremeció, levantando como una ola aquellas montañas azules que cubrieron cosas inconcebibles.

Yet again the fiends came after the years of forgetfulness had gone by–for man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.

By Crom, though I've spend considerable time among you civilized peoples, your ways are still beyond my comprehension

I have not died as men may die, nor sinned as men have sinned, But I have reached a misty sky upon a granite wind.

True beasts know no gods.

I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of.

I have no fear of the Hereafter. An orthodox hell could hardly be more torture than my life has been.

Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.

Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

When I cannot stand alone, it will be time to die.

It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living.

I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.

But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.

It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.

I became a writer in spite of my environments.

For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.

Man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream -- that is real, that is immortal.