92 quotes
We’re making tin gods out of those poor buffoons in Hollywood; I dote on movies and appreciate the scanty art therein but I consider the profession about the most debased and debasing I know.
Chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune!
Queen of the Black Coast (1934)
I see in the papers where Roy Guthrie committed suicide. Why, I wonder?
But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember — that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.
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.
Verily, the star of Azrael hovers over the birth of a beautiful woman, the King of the Dead laughs aloud, and ravens whet their black beaks.
The Road of Azrael (1976)
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)
Slowly the pale-faced noblemen and frightened women knelt, bowing in fear and reverence to the bloodstained giant who towered above them with his eyes ablaze.
"I am king!"
By This Axe I Rule! (1967)
Gleaming shell of an outworn lie; fable of Right divine—
You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.
The throne that I won by blood and sweat , by Crom, I will not sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!
The Scarlet Citadel (1933)
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.
Queen of the Black Coast (1934)
"They have no hope here or hereafter," answered Conan. "Their gods are Crom and his dark race, who rule over a sunless place of everlasting mist, which is the world of the dead. Mitra! The ways of the Aesir were more to my liking."
The Phoenix on the Sword (1932)
When the world was young and men were weak, and the fiends of the night walked free,
I strove with Set by fire and steel and the juice of the upas-tree
I have a faculty of memorizing any song or poem as I hear it, many, especially the old Scotch and Irish ballads I heard my grandmother sing when I was but a child.
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.
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.
"You cannot escape me!" he roared. "Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet! Hide from me and I'll tear apart the mountains to find you! I'll follow you to hell!"
The Frost-Giant's Daughter (1953)
The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth.
Wings in the Night (1932)
Money and muscle, that’s what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won’t do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won’t enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it.
Not for naught had he gained access into darksome cults, had harkened to the grisly whispers of the votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and read the forbidden iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind.
Black Colossus (1933)
Hell, the world isn’t worth reforming or even aiding as I can see. Men are swine and most women are fools. Befriend a man and he’ll betray you. Fondle a woman and she’ll double-cross you – whip her and she’ll cringe to you.