Quotes by Editors - Page 22

The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown.
George Zebrowski
I don't speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.
Frank Herbert
Unfettered is an anthology filled with magic, wonderment, and hope. It is more than it's combined stories, though. It is the power of friendship. Of giving. Of a science-fiction and fantasy community that protects its own. Of humanity escaping the ugliness that often plagues it to instead create a testament to the goodness found in every heart.
Shawn Speakman
The mind is the reality. You are what you think.
Alfred Bester
Perhaps it's the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle's burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line? Would the beetle be a fool to assume the human race put the can there to torment it — or an egomaniac to believe the can was manufactured only to mystify it? It would be best for the beetle to study the can in terms of the can's logic, to the limit of the beetle's ability. In that way, at least, the beetle can proceed intelligently. It may even grasp some hint of the can's maker. Any other approach is either folly or madness.
Algis Budrys
You can not go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after.
Frank Herbert
I let myself flop - so gently, so slowly - into my one real chair and tried to make myself understand that I was on the doorstep of the universe.
Frederik Pohl
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How? traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.
Frank Herbert
They compose poems to their knives.
Frank Herbert
science fiction is not about the future but about the possibilities inherent in the present.
Judith B. Kerman
Well what would you expect?" she sputtered. "They can call themselves privateers, but we all know they're just pirates with papers.
Jason Fry
I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.
Frank Herbert
Don't pick up hitchhikers!"- D. Adams
Robert Lynn Asprin
You can give me detention. Oh, wait, that's right...you aren't the boss of me. So I guess you can just bite me. -Dean
Jeff Mariotte
He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Frank Herbert
It's a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I've found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs. Guilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can't help it—she's got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell in the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world’s language, that it’s different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn’t speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn’t it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don’t hear just with your ears. And I said that’s what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life.” Hawat chuckled. “How’d that sit with her?” “I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: 'A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
Frank Herbert
I can smell your blood now. I can smell it in every room of the house.
Jolie du Pre
At this point, a few words on this term 'horror' are perhaps called for. Some amateurs of this kind of literature engage in endless hairsplitting disputes, centered around this word and its close companion 'terror', as to which' stories may so be categorized and which may not, and whether or not descriptions such as weird or fantasy or macabre are preferable. The designation 'horror', with its connotations of revulsion, satisfies me no more than it does the purists but I believe that it is the only term which embraces all the stories in this collection and which succinctly suggests to the majority of readers what is in store for them. Horror then, in this instance, covers tales of the Supernatural and of physical terror, of ghosts and necromancy and of inhuman violence and all the dark corners and crevices of human belief and behavior that lie in between. ("An Age In Horror" - introduction)
Michel Parry
I shook with cold and fear, without being able to answer. After a lapse of some moments, I was again called. I made an effort to speak, and then felt the bandage which wrapped me from head to foot. It was my shroud. At last, I managed feebly to articulate, 'Who calls?''Tis I' said a voice.'Who art thou?''I! I! I!' was the answer; and the voice grew weaker, as if it was lost in the distance; or as if it was but the icy rustle of the trees.A third time my name sounded on my ears; but now it seemed to run from tree to tree, as if it whistled in each dead branch; so that the entire cemetery repeated it with a dull sound. Then I heard a noise of wings, as if my name, pronounced in the silence, had suddenly awakened a troop of nightbirds. My hands, as if by some mysterious power, sought my face. In silence I undid the shroud which bound me, and tried to see. It seemed as if I had awakened from a long sleep. I was cold.I then recalled the dread fear which oppressed me, and the mournful images by which I was surrounded. The trees had no longer any leaves upon them, and seemed to stretch forth their bare branches like huge spectres! A single ray of moonlight which shone forth, showed me a long row of tombs, forming an horizon around me, and seeming like the steps which might lead to Heaven. All the vague voices of the night, which seemed to preside at my awakening, were full of terror. ("The Dead Man's Story")
James Hain Friswell
Henry,' at last said one, again dipping the spoon into the flaming spirit, 'hast thou read Hoffman?''I should think so,' said Henry.'What think you of him?''Why, that he writes admirably; and, moreover, what is more admirable - in such a manner that you see at once he almost believes that which he relates. As for me, I know very well that when I read him of a dark night, I am obliged to creep to bed without shutting my book, and without daring to look behind me.''Indeed; then you love the terrible and fantastic?''I do,' said Henry. ("The Dead Man's Story
James Hain Friswell
Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!'Those were the days.(introduction to "The Weird Woman")
Hugh Lamb
Cora didn't know a whole lot about wendigo, but there were ways in which they were just like people: they wanted above everything to live through the night("Stay")
Leah Bobet
Insects crawled across my skin, legs skittering across my flesh, numbed paths of cold left in their wake. They were the creatures that heralded my ghosts, and I knew them well, yet the revulsion they caused in those moments far exceeded anything I’d felt before.
Hazel Butler
I believe,' Muswell once said, 'that mental isolation is the essence of weird fiction. Isolation when confronted with disease, with madness, with horror and with death. These are the reverberations of the infinity that torments us.("The White Hands")
Mark Samuels
A grey-suited figure with badly-scuffed shoes was squatted over a woman’s body, obscuring her face and upper torso. A loose, white dress; torn, now mostly red. A pattern of rose petals, drenched in blood. One of her sandals was missing, scarlet streaks and spatters on her jade-green polished toenails and pale, slender ankles.tAnother step took him around the hunched and twitching figure. It ignored him, intent on its work. Then its victim came fully into view … and he saw her ruined face.
Scott Kaelen
The Harvester was the rustling of autumn leaves, there one minute, gone the next.
Jolene Haley
Since the fall of Man and the return of Magery and our older ways, most disputes were settled in a civilized manner: sword to the face, mace to the neck, acceptable societal situational handlers
Adam P. Knave
A horror writer is one who is not only willing to look into the darkest of shadows...but to reach into them too.
Thomas Scopel
Still, the car started, so we drove off to the movies. Popcorn happened. Previews, ads, and an annoying kid all went down like clockwork. The picture started and then ended a while later, the world unchanged by its passing.
Adam P. Knave
Horror, let's face it, is basically pretty dumb. You're writing about events that are preposterous, and the trick is to dress them up in language so compelling that the reader doesn't care.
T.E.D. Klein
You ate my dog, you undead freak!”Hey! Watch the slander. I hear the acceptable term is ‘corporeallychallenged’ now. No need to be rude.
Adam P. Knave
Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one's own was beyond the pale.
Steve Hockensmith
If we are part of nature, then we are synonymous with it at the metaphysical level, every bit as much as the first all-but-inorganic animalcules that ever formed a chain of themselves in the blow hole of a primordial sea vent. There is no magic rod that comes down three hundred thousand years ago and divides our essence from the material world that produced us. This means that we cannot speak in essential terms of nature—neither of its brutality nor of its beauty—and hope to say anything true, if what we say isn’t true of ourselves.The importance of that proposition becomes clear only when it’s reversed: What’s true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. As far as Rafinesque was concerned, it was just hard science. That part is mysterious. “She lives her life not as men or birds,” said Rafinesque, “but as a world.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Her fingers traced his stomach, trying to remember this is real, this is real with each strike of her heart.
Rebecca Brooks
What if everything about me is totally made up? What if I’m actually…I don’t know. A wanted fugitive in the States.”“Julia.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Nobody makes up being a high school math teacher.”“That’s why it’s the perfect disguise!”He shook his head. “Nobody.
Rebecca Brooks
If Blake thought she was going to be some meek, mealy-mouthedpushover grateful for his dick and his non-apologies, he obviously didn’t know what it took to make a room full of tenth graders pay attention.
Rebecca Brooks
When she at last pressed her mouth to his, it felt like coming home. He tasted of fire and smoke and earth, and fresh bread and soap and something so clean, so pure, it was like spring water to her lips.
Rebecca Brooks
Moving on was going to require leaving the woods and getting a friend set that didn’t have gray hairs, hip replacements and a few false teeth.
Rebecca Brooks
She couldn’t stop kissing him. Literally could not. There could be an earthquake, a fire, an explosion—who would notice? The whole world could come crashing down and it wouldn’t be enough for her to pull away.
Rebecca Brooks
The kiss was so soft she couldn’t believe this was the same bad boy who’d said such things to her with that mouth.
Rebecca Brooks
A quick and dirty whatever-it-was in the stolen minutes in the middle of the day was one thing. The quiet crackle of the fire, smell of warm bread, the home she knew was so important to him—this was something else altogether.
Rebecca Brooks
Sweetheart, I have no intention of denying you a thing.
Rebecca Brooks
The power of evil was nothing more than a tangible thing, something that given the strength of will, could be broken as easily as glass.
Nathan Robinson
If government played by the same rules as the rest of us, it would cease to be government.
Sheldon Richman
Horror is a situation, not a character, no matter how evil one may be.
Rachel Deering
Never concede to evil…. When we concede to evil, even in a small way, we feed it, and it grows stronger.
Dave Wolverton
It's the way we deal with what fate hands us that defines who we are.
Lisa Graff
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return.
Mark Galli
I sometimes wonder if God calls us into the church because it represents not the people of God at their best but us at our worst. I wonder if he calls us to become embedded in this wretched institution precisely because it is wretched. And calls us to be a part of it not to reform it or save it or control it in any way, but to simply love it.
Mark Galli
There is a point when facing the unknown stops being a longed-for adventure and becomes a terrifying reality.
Storm Constantine
…and yet, at the end of it all, a few very broad lines did seem to stick out, like the primary colors in a painting that explain all the confusing blends. And once I had understood my artificial convention, as one understands a convention of the theatre, it was surprising how many adventures did, with a squeeze, fit in their compartments- provided that I chuckled as I did the squeezing and reminded myself that it was all a game anyway.
Joseph J. Thorndike Jr.
Daddy was always searching for new adventure--always looking for a revelation. He used to say 'If you climb every mountain and walk into every valley, one day you'll surprise the Great Creator at his work.
John McLay
He watches the shadows cast by her hands as she sorts through their clothes scattered across the floor. The shape of her arms as she reaches up, slipping his black T-shirt over her head -- like victory. He considers the triumph of this moment, the slick of sweat on his chest. A small clatter, then the sound of a striking match. Her face glows. he reaches for her. She blows the match out, darts across the room, lights another one, glows, blows it out.
Suzanne Alyssa Andrew
Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.
Philip Athans
...every writer I had ever known wrote his best work when he had his back up against the wall and thought he would never write another word.
Adam Langer
I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as they interacted with him--they were part of his "road," the infinite range of experience that always had to remain open to fuel his work.
Joyce Johnson
When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.
Mary Ann Shaffer