Quotations

Memories, Loneliness, and Doom

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”

Edgar Allen Poe

4 Comments

  • Genie Hughes

    Damn autocorrect. Can you change back to strange impending doom? Autocorrect has the vocabulary of a toucan.

  • Genie Hughes

    Oh dear. So apropos to the times. Strange impending doom, indeed! I wonder if Edgar Allen Poe would have left us with such beautiful stories if he’d been on Zoloft?

    • admin

      That sort of question has floated up in my mind many times over the years. I doubt seriously that many of the creative geniuses would have produced their notable works if they were on the soul-flattening drugs that are pushed by doctors today, Genie. Some artists seem (seem, mind you…since I knew none of them) to have drawn strength from drink and drugs. Poe is one such man. I think also of the actor Richard Burton, whose peers often remarked on the vein of brilliance his drinking unleashed in him when he was young. Until it turned on him.