Edgar Allan Poe

"And all I loved, I loved alone."

"The best things in life make you sweaty."

"Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die."

"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'"

"There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion."

"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."

"For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea."

"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it."

"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."

"I have been happy, though in a dream.I have been happy-and I love the theme:Dreams! in their vivid colouring of lifeAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife"

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true."

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

"The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception."

"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream."

"Blood was its Avatar and its seal."

"Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."

"We loved with a love that was more than love."

"From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone."

"Even in the grave, all is not lost."

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."