I used to tell strange, wild, improbable tales akin to ghost stories, and discovered a taste for spinning yarns.
— Algernon Blackwood
A strong emotion, especially if experienced for the first time, leaves a vivid memory of the scene where it occurred.
But the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too luke-warm.
It is the little things that pierce and burn and prick for years to come.
And so with all things: names were vital and important.
It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?
My unworldliness, even at 21, was abnormal. Not only had I never smoked tobacco nor touched alcohol of any description, but I had never yet set foot inside a theatre, or gone to a race course I had never seen, nor held a billiard cue, nor touched a card.
And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.
His imagination conceived and bore - worlds; but nothing in these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was the breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.
