“[Behind Howard's stories] lurks a dark poetry and the timeless truth of dreams.”

Misattributed

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe (2013)

Source: Insecure at Last

The Dream
Song lyrics, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010)

About
Context: "Thriller was the first television program to discover the goldmine in those back issues of Weird Tales … Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons from Hell," one of the finest horror stories of our century, was adapted, and remains the favorite of many who remember Thriller with fondness. ~ Stephen King, Danse Macabre, p. 138,

Diary, 29th August 1932.
Quotation posted with the permission of the National Scottish Library, Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights. In this the poet and the philosopher are one. Using language as the lever, they lift thought above the levels where words perplex and retard its flight, and leave it, at last, standing face to face with the object which reveals itself.

Source: A Brief History of Everything (1996), p. 42
Context: Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?