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Robert E. Howard Quotes
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Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

Howard was born and raised in Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard's writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. His greatest success occurred after his death.

Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories was Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly-read author, with his best works still reprinted.

Howard's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have led to speculation about his mental health. His mother had been ill with tuberculosis his entire life, and upon learning she had entered a coma from which she was not expected to wake, he walked out to his car and shot himself in the head. Wikipedia  

✵ 22. January 1906 – 11. June 1936   •   Other names رابرت هاوارد
Robert E. Howard photo
Robert E. Howard: 145   quotes 6   likes

Robert E. Howard Quotes

“Mingle my dust with the burning brand,
Scatter it free to the sky
Fling it wide on the ocean’s sand,
From peaks where the vultures fly.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (August 28, 1925)
Letters

Flying

“Also, there was a rape over in the Cisco country. Man about forty and a girl about five. They didnt hang him. A guy can get away with nearly anything in this part of the country.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (April 21, 1924)
Letters

Guy , Girl , Parting , Country

“Yonder in the unknown vastness"—his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight—"yonder lies mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle—once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding—over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure—mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Hills of the Dead" (1930)

Death , Soul , Heart , Sea

“I heard from Truett that you fellows are forbidden the company of the girl you were going with. Thats a dirty shame. How come? I suppose its because you tried to act like gentlemen.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (July 7, 1925)
Letters

Girl

“Conan stood paralyzed in the disruption of the faculties which demoralizes anyone who is confronted by an impossible negation of sanity.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Devil in Iron" (1934)

“I'm not worrying about my Irish past. What has my Celtic blood ever done for me but give me a restless and unstable mind that gives me no rest in anything I do? Damn the Shan Van Vocht, and the ancestors that went to Sassenach gallows for her, and damn the Irish and damn the black Milesian blood in my veins that makes me like drift-wood fighting the waves and gives me no peace or rest waking or sleeping or riding or dreaming or traveling or wooing, drunken or sober, with hunger or slumber on me.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Harold Preece (1929)
Letters

Hunger , Peace , Dreams , Travel

“She who had been the spoiled and petted daughter of the Duke of Kordava, learned what is was to be a buccaneer's plaything, and because she was supple enough to bend without breaking, she lived where other women had died, and because she was young and vibrant with life, she came to find pleasure in the existence.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Pool of the Black One" (1933)

Life , Women , Pleasure , Learning

“One cannot write about Robert E. Howard without writing about Texas. This is inevitable, and particularly so when discussing any aspect of Howard's biography. To ignore the presence of the Lone Star State in Robert E. Howard's life and writing invites, at the very least, a few wrongheaded conclusions, and at worst, abject character assassination. This doesn't keep people from plunging right in and getting it wrong every time.”

Robert E. Howard

~ Mark Finn, 2006, p. 249, Blood and Thunder, ISBN 978-1-932265-21-7
About

Life , People , Star , Time

“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.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to August Derleth (March 1933)
Letters

History , Parting

“Kull was still mazed. "But being a wizard, having knowledge of all the ages and despising gold, glory, and position, what could Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?"
"Gold, power, and position," grunted Brule. "The sooner you learn that men are men whether wizard, king, or thrall, the better you will rule, Kull."”

Robert E. Howard

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" (1929)

Men , Age , Knowledge , Learning

“Magazines were even more scarce than books. It was after I moved into "town" (speaking comparatively) that I began to buy magazines. I well remember the first I ever bought. I was fifteen years old; I bought it one summer night when a wild restlessness in me would not let me keep still, and I had exhausted all the reading material on the place. I'll never forget the thrill it gave me. Somehow it never had occurred to me before that I could buy a magazine. It was an Adventure. I still have the copy. After that I bought Adventure for many years, though at times it cramped my resources to pay the price. It came out three times a month, then… I skimped and saved from one magazine to the next; I'd buy one copy and have it charged, and when the next issue was out, I'd pay for the one which I owed, and have the other one charged, and so on. So I generally owed for one, but only one.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (1933)
Letters

Books , Time , Reading , Summer

“"If that's true, then answer this priest, why are we in these pits, hiding from some animal?" Conan asked "Someday, when all your civilization and science are likewise swept away, your kind will pray for a man with a sword."”

Robert E. Howard

"Rogues in the House" (1934)

Science , Animals

“And about the table where stood the Dark Man, immovable as a mountain, washed the red waves of slaughter.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Dark Man" (1931)

Mountain

“"Found the short story collection, PIGEONS FROM HELL by Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan the Barbarian when I was thirteen, or fourteen. It was the first dark fantasy and heroic fantasy I’d ever read. In that moment I knew not only did I want to be a writer, but this is what I wanted to write." ~ Laurel K. Hamilton, About Laurel K. Hamilton,”

Robert E. Howard

http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/Laurell.html LaurelKHamilton.com
About

Hell , Reading

“In the hill country, civilization steals in last, and the people retain much of the crude but vigorous mode of expression of the colonial days and earlier.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (February 15, 1926)
Letters

People , Country

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Women , Age , World , Dreams

“For there are worlds beyond worlds, as Kull knows, and whether the wizard bewitched him by words or by mesmerism, vistas did open to the king’s gaze beyond that strange door, and Kull is less sure of reality since he gazed into the mirrors of Tuzun Thune.”

Robert E. Howard

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" (1929)

World , Reality

“I have no fear of the Hereafter. An orthodox hell could hardly be more torture than my life has been.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (July 1925)
Letters

Life , Fear , Hell

“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.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to Farnsworth Wright (c. Summer 1931)
Letters

Life , Thinking

“The lions had come into the plateau in great quantities and the herds of little pigs dwindled fast. Those the lions spared, Kane slew, and tossed to the jackals. This racked Kane's heart, for he was a kindly man and this wholesale slaughter, even of pigs who would fall prey to hunting beasts anyhow, grieved him. But it was part of his plan of vengeance and he steeled his heart.”

Robert E. Howard

"Wings in the Night" (1932)

Heart , Parting

“Kull walked apart, beyond the glow of the campfires to gaze out among the mystic vistas of crag and valley. The slopes were softened by verdue and foliage, the vales deepening into shadowy realms of magic, the hills standing out bold and clear in the silver of the moon. The hills of Zalgara has always held a fascination for Kull. They brought to his mind the mountains of Atlantis whose snowy heights he had scaled as a youth, ere he fared forth into the great world to write his name across the stars and make an ancient throne his seat.”

Robert E. Howard

"Riders Beyond the Sunrise" (1967)

Youth , World , Mountain , Star

“As for war, that will come when international capital is ready. I do not believe, and have never believed, that Mussolini, Hitler and the other European strong-arm, he-man dictators are anything but figure-heads and tools for international capitalism. The same crowd that recently approached Smedley Butler with a proposition to overthrow the government and set up a Fascist dictatorship; the same gang that would have made Hoover dictator if they had dared. The same gang that is now opposing everything Roosevelt tries to accomplish.”

Robert E. Howard

From a letter to H.P. Lovecraft, (c. December 1934). Quoted in Rusty Burke, Robert E. Howard: New Deal Heroic Fantasist. The Dark Man 2(1/2) Journal, Spring 2006.
Letters

War , Strong

“I wrote my first story when I was fifteen, and sent it—to Adventure, I believe. Three years later I managed to break into Weird Tales. Three years of writing without selling a blasted line.”

Robert E. Howard

I never have been able to sell to Adventure; guess my first attempt cooked me with them for ever!
From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. July 1933)
Letters