Quotes by Editors - Page 17

I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.
Mark Galli
If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?
Mark Galli
It was wrong. It was like arresting the gun for murder.
Ellery Queen
Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.
Frank Herbert
All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.
George Zebrowski
Isn’t that why all writers write? To inspire their readers?
Adam Langer
Give me the discipline to get rid of the stuff that's not important, the freedom to savor the stuff that gives me joy, and the patience not to worry about the stuff that's messy but not hurting anybody.
Vinita Hampton Wright
Use the first moments in study. You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory in this way, but the moment the study are in insurance of success. Take your time and be sure.
Frank Herbert
The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth.
Frank Herbert
Was I (am I not still?) a victim of words and books merely, and are books just an excuse for living, living things out in parenthesis, even in the most desolate stony place as I was, quotations and misquotations raining down on me thick and fast – words, words, words – the multitude of words, a parody of rain? For after all, as old Mrs Feany said, the rain is healthy. And the rain it raineth everyday. But the stuff of books and solitude and spying on the poor, could they be healthy? Or were my doubts the real heresy and treason? What book ever changed the world? It seems a solipsism to say that what changes the way we see the world, changes the world, but it is not. Where do you want me to begin? The Bible, Das Kapital? The Divine Comedy, The Satanic Verses?
Andrew McNeillie
The acquisition of culture requires repose, sitting quietly in a room with a book, or alone with one's thoughts even any crowded concert or art museum.
Joseph Epstein
Beauty was worthIts every sorrow, mind's fading or World's ending,As darkness covered the garden that is the earth.
Hayden Carruth
The fear of blacks has become the dirty little secret of our political culture.
Norman Podhoretz
Daniel first kisses his brother in a town where no-one knows them, a no-account place that's barely even a town, just some buildings clustered around the highway: a smoky bar, an empty motel, a convenience store that only sells candy and condoms and beer. The nearest gas station is twenty miles away. The nearest bus station is fifty.
Kirsty Logan
She used to be all right, Una, when we were kids. I liked that she wasn't fussed about her antlers.
Kirsty Logan
Walking out of the office, her nervous fingers made an ear out of the tissue in her pocket – luckily the thin sheets wouldn't hold the shape, and unfurled as she threw it on the pavement. On the journey home, her bus ticket became a tongue.
Kirsty Logan
That August, Elodie Selkirk became the latest lady in Paris to order a coin-operated boy.
Kirsty Logan
Love does that. It makes you feel infinite and invincible, like the whole world is open to you, anything is achievable, and each day will be filled with wonder. Maybe it’s the act of opening yourself up, letting someone else in— or maybe it’s the act of caring so deeply about another person that it expands your heart. I’ve heard so many people say some version of I never knew how much I could love another human being until . . . And after the until is usually something like my niece was born or I gave birth to a child or I adopted a baby. I never knew how much I could love another human being until I met you, Gabe.I’ll never forget that.
Jill Santopolo
This is what I always said to André: you never know. You never know what the future may bring. I just knew that whatever time we had together, whether one year or thirty-four, I wanted it. I wanted him. Regardless of the consequences. When a love like that comes your way, you grab, hold, cherish it – you live it. You don’t allow it to pass by. It is rare and precious. If you are lucky, you’ll have it once in a lifetime. Will I be allowed to live it twice? I doubt it, even if I wish it were possible. Periodically, I sit quietly and stare into space and understand that I am only forty, and it is behind me.
Karina Szczurek
To appreciate how income taxation reduces prosperity form what it could be, imagine a 100 percent tax on incomes. We wouldn't expect much prosperity in such a society. People would have no incentive to earn money. They would devote resources to hiding the little they did earn. No investments would be made. No savings would exist to increase living standards. People's activities would be grossly influenced by the tax. If we lower the rate from 100 percent, the principle does not change. . . If you want less of something, tax it.
Sheldon Richman
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Gideon J. (Gideon John) Tucker
If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas.
Graceanne A. Decandido
The stove, she knew, wished it were a volcano, the humble teaspoons wished they were steamshovels, and the sink wished it were a well so all the others could have their wishes. Yet they all stayed exactly the same no matter what they wished, no matter what they saw and heard.
Georgess McHargue
Being a child is such a shining gift, yet we don't know how precious it is until it's worn out and gone away.
Storm Constantine
I met Baba Yaga at the end of childhood – past pigtails and fairytales, but not quite ready to give up on make-believe.
Kirsty Logan
That's the most terrible thing about being a child; you're convinced that it's all your fault." Lulu
Ruth Reichl
The little room was full of ordinary things that had already become precious, that I couldn't help but want to have again, to feel like whoever it was I used to be, whether it was my past or someone else's.
Wendy McClure
To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.
Frank Herbert
And for the rest of her life, the girl, the woman, she never made a mark on anyone either that proved anything absolutely for certain, that she could ever see, about what she had done at any time, and this does not break her heart."Cloud
Diane Williams
Look! Why want anything more marvellous than what is.
Diana Athill
The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about… the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard.Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"--with a lady.
Holly Black
When Tana was six, vampires were Muppets, endlessly counting, or cartoon villains in black cloaks with red polyester lining.
Holly Black
If you had watched any of those three wonderful films, you would have caught Vampire Gym Teacher # 2: Back to Cruel, where the vampire hunter ties a vampire chick to the shower and tortures her by turning on the water. They can‟t stand water, even if it‟s not holy water.
Rusty Fischer
My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book--everything I like--trying to evoke some of the decadence… Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires--they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection--the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in.
Holly Black
I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,] it was really helpful to think about the way you can use language. When you're writing about faeries, you can't call anyone "fey"; there are certain words that become forbidden because they're actualized in what faeries do. When you write about vampires, you could think the same way about things like the word "red" or "hunger"--it's interesting to think of the ways that the words have double meanings, or different meanings that shifted.
Holly Black
It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.
Ellen Datlow
When we turn,is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?
Holly Black
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in itsvalue.
Charles Dudley Warner
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured.
Frank Herbert
Keep in mind, we are past the age of enlightenment. This is past reason. We are pretty deep into modern history and the decline of religion. This is when nature itself has been stripped bare of its cozy personality and we all feel homeless in our natures as well."The Limits Of The World
Diane Williams
Never do something for just one reason.
Jeff VanderMeer
There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ance
Noah Webster
Aubrey Fitzwilliam knew that crisis was another word for opportunity.
Michael Pryor
The universe is full of doors.
Frank Herbert
If you stay ready, there's no need to get ready when an opportunity presents itself.
Maxine Phillips
Don't sit with your back to any doors.
Frank Herbert
Master of human destinies am I.Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,Cities and fields I walk; I penetrateDeserts and seas remote, and, passing byHovel, and mart, and palace, soon or lateI knock unbidden, once at every gate!If sleeping, wake -- if feasting, rise beforeI turn away. It is the hour of fate,And they who follow me reach every stateMortals desire, and conquer every foeSave death; but to those who doubt or hesitate,Condemned to failure, penury, and woe,Seek me in vain and uselessly implore--I answer not; and I return no more.
John James Ingalls
Well, then, he ought to write her a letter. He ought to say: 'This is to tell you that I propose to live with you as soon as this show is over. You will be prepared immediately on cessation of active hostilities to put yourself at my disposal; please. Signed, Xtopher Tietjens, Acting O.C. 9th Glams. A proper military communication.
Ford Madox Ford
Riley asked himself why he had ever considered space travel romantic. “Because you are a romantic,” his pedia said.
James Edwin Gunn
This is THE most romantic thing that has ever happened to me, and it involves both drugs and a toilet.
Katie Heaney
You're a romantic. What's romantic about a guy wanting to go somewhere and actually getting there?
Anne Fadiman
I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Who cares about a test? There will be a million more quizzed in your life.
Holly Black
Didn’t anyone ask you where your parents are?""They asked. Especially about my parents.""What did you tell them?""I said I ate them.""Jesus, Rosa.
Justine Larbalestier
There she stood. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was pale, almost snow-white. She probably hadn't slept, either. She was still wearing the same dress. Her hair looked like a bomb had gone off. She was beautiful.
Daniel Ehrenhaft
When we were little kids, 'friend' wasn't a verb. You didn't 'friend' someone. You had friends. It was only a noun. It didn't multitask. It was a simpler time, Hen.
Daniel Ehrenhaft
If you can't change it don't worry about it.
David Barrett
As a book author, it's your responsibility to cast a vision for your book about the length and appearance before you pitch the idea to a publisher.
W. Terry Whalin
How could you determine a man's intention if you didn't speak his language or share his beliefs? She'd happily embarked on a study of ancient Egyptian religion but had no curiosity about Islam, which seemed an amalgam of oddities and borrowings. She felt with conviction what she'd written home more than once--that Egypt would be an exquisite country if not for the Egyptians who lived there.
Enid Shomer
An oft-quoted statistic from the [United Nations] reports is that the amount of literature translated into Spanish in a single year exceeds the entire corpus of what has been translated into Arabic in 1,000 years.
The Economist