Kroicher & Doré

Some may ever blindly bow to outlandish deities; others – a subtler touch – bow, in innocence or prowess, to simple curiosity.

Le Néophyte, 1877. Gustave Doré.

Lovecraft & Turner

“There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.”

– H. P. Lovecraft, “Celephaïs”.

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1834. J. M. W. Turner.

Lovecraft & Beksiński

“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species – if separate species we be – for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night. No one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who had been; for certain papers and a certain boxed object were found, which made men wish to forget. Some who knew him do not admit that he ever existed.”

– H. P. Lovecraft, “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family”.

Untitled, 1979. Zdzisław Beksiński. 

Wolfe & Weber

“A few moments before, I had been disturbed because I lacked a weapon. Now I felt I had one – resolution and a plan are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges on them.”

– Gene Wolfe, Sword & Citadel, p.285-286.

The Lord of The Flies, 2009. Illustration by Sam Weber.