Robert E. Howard Quotations

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I became a writer in spite of my environments.

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

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.

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.

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.

A woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra to any about her.

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.

I have known many gods. He who denies them is blind as he who trusts them too deeply.

What always was must always be.

Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things.

Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness...

No man can be convinced when he will not.

I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today -- which is like the dreams of ghosts!

One man's bane is another's bliss.

One objection I have heard voiced to works of this kind—dealing with Texas—is the amount of gore spilled across the pages. It can not be otherwise. In order to write a realistic and true history of any part of the Southwest, one must narrate such things, even at the risk of monotony.

My body seems a mere encumbrance to me; an imbecillic wagon, hitched to the horse of desire, which is the soul.

Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally - oh, very rarely! - the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.

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

It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.

I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.

While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.

Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence - whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.

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.

The poem you sent me was as fiery and virile as anything you've ever written - or anybody else, for that matter. Especially the second part went to my brain like the flaming liquor of insanity. No one else besides Jack London has the power to move me just that way.

My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

Youngsters of this generation seem not quite so hazardous except in the way of mechanical speed, bad liquor and venereal diseases.

I am unable to rouse much interest in any highly civilized race, country or epoch, including this one.

The sea-road is good for wanderers and landless men. There is quenching of thirst on the grey paths of the winds, and the flying clouds to still the sting of lost dreams.

The printed page was like wine to me.

Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.

We're making tin gods out of those poor buffoons in Hollywood; I dote on movies and appreciate the scanty art therein but I consider the profession about the most debased and debasing I know.

I reckon if I ever marry, she will have to be a strong woman in a circus or something.

It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.

A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.

When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come?

I see in the papers where Roy Guthrie committed suicide. Why, I wonder?

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

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

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat & stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame crimson, and I am content"......Conan the Cimmerian.

In the hill country, civilization steals in last, and the people retain much of the crude but vigorous mode of expression of the colonial days and earlier.

Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?

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

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.

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,

But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.

Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.

The only safe enemy was a headless enemy.

It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.

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

Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.

Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man.

He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect—he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.

Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood.

How can I wear the harness of toil And sweat at the daily round, While in my soul forever The drums of Pictdom sound?

I'm not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go by.

It was no ape, neither was it a man. It was some shambling horror spawned in the mysterious, nameless jungles of the south, where strange life teemed in the reeking rot without the dominance of man, and drums thundered in temples that had never known the tread of a human foot.

Rome got some peachy pastings when she tried to lick the Irish.

I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed.

Musings The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears. They reach their mad blind hands into the night, To plumb abysses dead to human sight; To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled, Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world. [click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]

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.

What is death but a traversing of eternities and a crossing of cosmic oceans?

If I was wealthy I'd never do anything but poke around in ruined cities all over the world - and probably get snake-bit.

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.

Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.

Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.

Before the invader sound was born, the Universe was silent and shall be again.

I don't believe I ever saw an Oklahoman who wouldn't fight at the drop of a hat -- and frequently drop the hat himself.

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.

I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down, a hundred against one.

In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.

Man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.

Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.

Money and muscle, that's what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won't do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won't enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it.

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.

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

Any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.

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.

I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I see not beyond death. ... Let me live 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. ... I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less than an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!