Robert E. Howard

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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!"

"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."

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