Fantasy Quotes - Page 53

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.

There's something terribly weird about the standard fantasy setting--not least of which the fact the phrase "standard fantasy setting" can be uttered without irony.

Yahtzee Croshaw

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

Alberto Manguel

He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!

Charles Baudelaire

Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling.

Julio Cortázar

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge… It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it.

Julio Cortázar

I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.

David Farland

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

Washington Irving

A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law.

H.P. Lovecraft

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.

Diane Duane

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

China Miéville

Fancies are like shadows...you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things.

L.M. Montgomery

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is.

Philip Pullman

Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

Patrick Rothfuss

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

J.R.R. Tolkien

You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe.God was real, and he hated us.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The truth is I don’t know what happens to the spirits of the dead when they leave this world. Priests may claim to, even Truthseeker may claim to. However nobody truly knows. All Truthseeker truly knows is that Ishar, Kirfell, Orion and Avanti are lies. He has no proof of an alternative. I don’t know. There may be nothing beyond this dark reality we live in, but that doesn’t feel right to me. We love, we hate, we fight, we strive... People’s lives seem too complex and important to be simply extinguished like a candle.’~Vexis ZaelwarshDeathsworn Arc 5: The Temple of the Mad God

Martyn Stanley

In the absence of faith, our dreams will move from feasible aspirations to implausible fantasy.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

They are faithful, even if we are not.

Ashlee Willis

They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they (...) become dust and bone, and their ghosts whine on the wind a little while till the wind blows them away. They do not have immortal souls.

Ursula K Le Guin

The surge of his ardour swept through him in climatic release, filling her womb with his final, mortal sowing.

Georgina Anne Taylor

The moon people do not eat by swallowing food but by smelling it. Their money is poetry - actual poems, written out on pieces of paper whose value is determined by the worth of the poem itself.

Paul Auster

The townspeople took the prince for deadWhen he never returned with the dragon’s headWhen with her, he stayedShe thought he’d be too afraidBut he loved her too much instead.

Jess C. Scott

I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.

Steve Erickson

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.

Charles Baudelaire

So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.

T.S Eliot

Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

W.B. Yeats

So fine a medicine is the will to action.

Hope Mirrlees

It shocked his sense of dramatic economy that they should have to resort to violence when the same result could have been obtained by a minimum expenditure of energy.

Hope Mirrlees

Once you become a known writer, you will not have bad books anymore. You will only have less good books than the good ones.

I.B. George

Used every man according to his capacity.

Mary Stewart

The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.

Mary Stewart

Vengeance ought to be spoken through gritted teeth, spittle flying, the cords of one's soul so entangled in it that you can't let it go, even if you try. If you feel it--if you really feel it--then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist and there's blood running down your arm, dripping off your elbow, and you can't let go.

Laini Taylor

Where have all the Fembots gone?

Ren Garcia

They are ever-changing. They are unlike immortals who stay young and beautiful forever—who have time under their control. Humans, they only have a few years to live, and yet there is beauty in the way time controls them.

Kaye Allen

Maybe one did have to be smart in order to kill.

Markelle Grabo

Death. It was something I had to think about once. Weird, right? Strange that death was ever an inevitable end, but it wasn’t anymore. Not really. I eluded it. Tricked it. It was an odd concept—the world aged, moved forward, yet I . . . didn’t.

Laura Kreitzer

That kind of imagination is why we're not dead.

Rebecca McKinsey

Then Deborah stood at the wicket gate, the boundary, and there was a woman with outstretched hand, demanding tickets."Pass through," she said when Deborah reached her. "We saw you coming." The wicket gate became a turnstile. Deborah pushed against it and there was no resistance, she was through. "What is it?" she asked. "Am I really here at last? Is this the bottom of the pool?""It could be," smiled the woman. "There are so many ways. You just happened to choose this one."Other people were pressing to come through. They had no faces, they were only shadows. Deborah stood aside to let them by, and in a moment they had gone, all phantoms."Why only now, tonight?" asked Deborah. "Why not in the afternoon, when I came to the pool?""It's a trick," said the woman. "You seize on the moment in time. We were here this afternoon. We're always here. Our life goes on around you, but nobody knows it. The trick's easier by night, that's all.""Am I dreaming, then?" asked Deborah."No," said the woman, "this isn't a dream. And it isn't death, either. It's the secret world."The secret world... It was something Deborah had always known, and now the pattern was complete. The memory of it, and the relief, were so tremendous that something seemed to burst inside her heart."Of course..." she said, "of course..." and everything that had ever been fell into place. There was no disharmony. The joy was indescribable, and the surge of feeling, like wings about her in the air, lifted her away from the turnstile and the woman, and she had all knowledge. That was it - the invasion of knowledge. ("The Pool")

Daphne du Maurier

Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder...

Cornelia Funke

...Opal is dead, and I don't see how a healer can change that! It's not something to joke about."Joke?" Then Owen hit his forehead and cried, "That's right, you haven't heard!"Heard what?" asked Adrien, who felt an insane glimmer of hope return to his heart.Death is on strike! She hasn't done that for two centuries, and it's very annoying. Your friend is alive."Very annoying?" repeated Amber. "I don't see what's so annoying about a miracle! What is Death on strike for?"Everyone knows that Death lives in Fairytale-in an inaccessible area, obviously. And just a few hours ago, she decided to stop working. So, for now, no one can die.

Flavia Bujor

Fairytales by nature only talk about the victors. The survivors. Nobody speaks about what happens to those who failed, except in the abstract: as cautionary tales to guide others onto the path to success. How many brave knights fell to the dragon before he was slayed by the noble prince? How many children burned to a crisp and eaten before the wicked witch received her due? These stories are lost, but the lesson behind them is not: it is not enough to be merely pure and good.

Nenia Campbell

She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.

George R.R. Martin

Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.

Ursula K Le Guin

Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.“Hello, Bod,” she said.“Hello,” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”“Names aren’t really important,” she said.“I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”“He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”“Can I ride him?” asked Bod.“One day,” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”“Promise?”I promise.

Neil Gaiman

Here is a list of terrible things,The jaws of sharks, a vultures wingsThe rabid bite of the dogs of war,The voice of one who went before,But most of all the mirror's gaze,Which counts us out our numbered days.

Clive Barker

You’ll see,” Mother assured her. “The fish will be just as friendly and the waves just as fresh in the new world the door makers find for us.

Melanie Crowder

Benny pushed a slow breath through his teeth. “Is it so terrible to believe in something?

Melanie Crowder

Marcii hoped she was wrong, though she knew the odds were slim.Still, in the face of everything, there is always hope.

Ross Turner

With enough 'ifs' we could put Paris in a bottle.

French proverb

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way.

F.K. Preston

Did I love her? No. I obsessed over her completely. And thank heavens I was obsessed. Obsession, infatuation, is something short-lived. A sweet fever dream that leaves you exhausted from the high. Love is perpetual. Love is an entire world compared to that other form of mania people mistake love for. If love is loving the reality of a person, obsession is idealising the fantasy of another. Did I love her? No. Never. But I was utterly obsessed.

F.K. Preston

I wish I could run into the world’s arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself.

F.K. Preston

All around us is a nothing that stretches on for infinity. We humans can barely comprehend that. If we comprehend it we are rarely pleased.

F.K. Preston

A death in reverse is the rewinding of life. I do not die of old age, in a bed surrounded by strangers my loved ones paid to take care of me. I die in reverse. I die falling backinto a younger age. From my forty-five years to twenty-five. To sixteen. When we were in love. To fourteen: when we first met. To five. To one. To the hospital my mother died at from the complications of my existence. A life for a life.

F.K. Preston

But I can’t control my dreams. I can’t even remember them. For all I know I’m having the time of my life when I sleep, but I just can’t remember. So I’m forced to live in a life I have no control over. A life where I’m either numb to everything or terrified of every thought that crosses my mind. If this is all just a dream, then it sure is a disappointing one.But I still have time to try and control my dreams. I have time to try and make my dreams a reality in this waking life as well. The one bloody thing I have is time. I’ve got to remember that. I still have time. And despite everything, there is something reassuring about that.

F.K. Preston

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn’t change so much anymore. It doesn’t change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven’t been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I’m human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It’s my shadow I see watching me. It’s my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on.

F.K. Preston

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It’s not a black darkness. It’s simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I’ve heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It’s all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space.

F.K. Preston

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I’m too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She’s waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I’m eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I’m so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met?

F.K. Preston

All that is required of you is an open mind and a little patience.

F.K. Preston

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Fantasy Quotes - Page 53

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