“It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.”

—  H.P. Lovecraft

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

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H.P. Lovecraft photo
H.P. Lovecraft 203
American author 1890–1937

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