Robert E. Howard

“I have not been a success, and probably never will be.”

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

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.”

“The people among which I lived - and yet live, mainly - made their living from cotton, wheat, cattle, oil, with the usual percentage of business men and professional men.”

“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.”

“All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre—The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.”

“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.”

“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. 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.”

“But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality.”

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

“I have accomplished little enough, but such as it is, it is the result of my own efforts.”

“How can I wear the harness of toilAnd sweat at the daily round,While in my soul foreverThe drums of Pictdom sound?”

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.”

“Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among which one's lot is cast; a profession which seems as dim and faraway and unreal as the shores of Europe.”

“I became a writer in spite of my environments.”

“Gleaming shell of an outworn lie; fable of Right divine—You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.The throne that I won by blood and sweat , by Crom, I will not sellFor promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!”

“The Lion banner sways and falls in the horror-haunted gloom;A scarlet Dragon rustles by, borne on winds of doom.In heaps the shining horsemen lie, where the thrusting lances break,And deep in the haunted mountains, the lost, black gods awake.Dead hands grope in the shadows, the stars turn pale with fright,For this is the Dragon's Hour, the triumph of Fear and Night.”

“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.”

“Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.”