Robert E. Howard Quotes

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,

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 come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing.

Up in the glade, and notch an arrow.

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.

By this axe I rule!

A true fanatic, his promptings were reasons enough for his actions.

A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.

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

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

One man's bane is another's bliss.

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

It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the grasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities where kings with curled blueblack beards worshipped round-bellied gods with curious rites.

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.

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.

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

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.

The only safe enemy was a headless enemy.

The printed page was like wine to me.

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.

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

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.

There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage," answered the Cimmerian

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

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

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

Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure.

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.

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

Ensorcelled by that belling resonance, Conan crouched forgetful of all else, until its hypnotic power caused a strange replacement of faculties and perception, and sound created the illusion of sight. Conan was no longer aware of the voice, save as far-off rhythmical waves of sound. Transported beyond his age and his own individuality, he was seeing the transmutation of the being men called Khosatral Khel which crawled up from Night and the Abyss ages ago to clothe itself in the substance of the material universe.

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

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.

The moon rose, striking fire from the Cimmerian's horned helmet. No call awoke the echoes; yet suddenly the night grew tense and the jungle held its breath. Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword in its sheath.

The tall Khitan lifted his head and gazed at Publio, so that the merchant broke into a profuse sweat.
"What do you wish of me?" he stuttered.
"A ship," answered the Khitan. "A ship well manned for a long voyage."
"For how long a voyage?" stammered Publio, never thinking of refusing.
"To the ends of the world, perhaps," answered the Khitan, "or to the molten seas of hell that lie beyond the sunrise.

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.

Then, since all great poets are strange in their speech and actions, he must have achieved great fame, for his actions and conversations were the strangest of any man I ever knew.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep." "Then

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Conan, grim, blood-stained, naked but for a loin-cloth, shackles on his mighty limbs, his blue eyes blazing beneath the tangled black mane which fell over his low broad forehead.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The five-foot blade crushed Strabonus' casque and skull, and the king's charger reared screaming, hurling a limp and sprawling corpse from the saddle. A great cry went up from the host, which faltered and gave back.

Conan mentally termed the creatures black men, for lack of a better term; instinctively he knew that these tall ebony beings were not men, as he understood the term. No

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 sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!

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

You black dog!" A red mist of fury swept across Conan's eyes. "Were I free I'd give you a broken back!

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

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.

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

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.

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

A pantherish twist and shift of his body avoided the blundering rush of two yellow swordsmen, and the blade of one missing its objective, was sheathed in the breast of the other. A

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.

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

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 became a writer in spite of my environments.

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.

where did these people their food? i'm hungry.

It was made from the black lotus, whose blossoms wave in the lost jungles of Khitai, where only the yellow-skulled priests of Yun dwell. Those blossoms strike dead any who smell of them.

The wild hetman stood like a statue for a space, dimly grasping something of the cosmic tragedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it.

Well, I like a good hater. But that can wait.

Blast your soul, you hussy!" he exclaimed in exasperation.

Did you deem yourself strong because you were able to twist the heads off civilised folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong.

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.

He saw no particular humor in it, and was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. He was bewildered and chagrined, and doubtless would have slunk away, abashed, but the Kothian chose

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

He was no defensive fighter; even in the teeth of overwhelming odds he always carried the war to the enemy.

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

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

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

The black went down like a felled tree, gushing 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?

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]