Edgar Allan Poe — "The pure Imagination is a faculty, and not a quality."

"I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human progress is an illusion, that man is not an animal that can be perfected, but an animal that can be improved."

"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us, (for a brief period, at least) are, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, persons of mere address, perseverance, effrontery—in a word, busy-bo…"

"There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told."

"A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere -- and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all …"

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