ROBERT E. HOWARD

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.

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

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

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

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

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

The only safe enemy was a headless enemy.

A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.

What always was must always be.

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.

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

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.

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

No man can be convinced when he will not.