c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I love to walk through snow, to climb mountains, to smell the fresh air and I love to dream about flying. Soaring through the air, watching the earth from above, feeling the wind in my face and touching the clouds would be an amazing experience.
— Oliver Neubert, The Flyers
In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide -- a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world.
— Paul  Lockhart, A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
Well did the traveler know those garden lands that lie betwixt the wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing river Oukranos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colors of the thousand flowers that starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a little more of the summer's humming music of birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place, and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
And then Harry Potter had launched in to a speech that was inspiring, yet vague. A speech to the effect that Fred and George and Lee had tremendous potential if they could just learn to be weirder. To make people's live surreal, instead of just surprising them with the equivalents of buckets of water propped above doors. (Fred and George had exchanged interested looks, they'd never thought of that one.) Harry Potter had invoked a picture of the prank they'd pulled on Neville - which, Harry had mentioned with some remorse, the Sorting Hat had chewed him out on - but which must have made Neville doubt his own sanity. For Neville it would have felt like being suddendly transported into an alternate universe. The same way everyone else had felt when they'd seen Snape apologize. That was the true power of pranking.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Procrastination robs the world of countless treasures.
— Brian Rathbone, The Dawning of Power
For men, the answer was always the same and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know.
— George R.R. Martin
I don't believe in virgin sacrifice. It encourages promiscuity at an early age
— Adrianne Ambrose, Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice
A grim expression came over Syah’s face. “The colt you speak of lost its mother during a storm. If this stallion was that colt, it is not just wild, it is insane. That horse will break your bones.” “And that will be a worthy end, a prince struck down by such a noble steed.”Fasime pushed himself off the support of the fence, but Oman grabbed his arm.“It’s not worth it, Brother.”“I can tame him.” “What will we tell Mother and Father if he kills you?” Oman questioned.“Tell them I gave my life with pride. Do not punish him if he kills me. Release him back into the wild, and my spirit will ride him into the mist.
— D.M. Raver, Brother Betrayed
From the instant of our first meeting I judged him so, though it could be said that I was prejudiced. When one is standing naked on a slave-auction block in a wind cold enough to freeze a demon's backside, one is unlikely to have a fair impression of anyone.
— Carol Berg, Transformation
If consciousness is currency, I've got me a goldmine!
— Kim Falconer, The Spell of Rosette
(From Danielle Raver's short story THE ENCHANTRESS)Thick chains attached to the wall hold a metal collar and belt, restraining most of the tiger's movements. Open, bloody slashes cover his face and back, but he shows no loss of strength as he pulls on the chains and tries to rip the flesh of the surrounding humans with his deadly claws. Out of his reach, I kneel down before him, and his lightning-blue eyes cross my space for a moment. “Get her out of there!” I hear from behind me.“Numnerai,” I speak urgently to the tiger. “They will kill you!” He growls and gnashes his teeth, but I sense he is responding to me. “Great white tiger, your duty is to protect the prince. But how can you do that if they sink the end of a spear into your heart?” He looks at me for a longer moment. The fighters respond to this by growing still. In their desperation, they are overlooking my foolishness for a chance to save their fellows' lives. I crouch on my feet and begin to nudge closer to him. The tiger growls a warning, but does not slash out at me. “Think of the prince, protector of the palace. Right now he prays for you to live.
— D.M. Raver, The Story Tellers' Anthology
There are thousands of other women to choose from. You understand me? And this court runs on ambition alone.
— Cindy Pon, Fury of the Phoenix
Lift your head to me...’ His is the kiss of a timorous lover. Feel his inhuman lips on the throat, the heat of it. The bite, when it comes, is cold. Begin to sink as the blood flows into his mouth; it is almost soothing. No pain. No pain at all. His teeth grind into the muscles; ecstasy and torment. Life, the very being, is flowing out. Unholy nourishment. Holy nourishment. Drained slowly.The trauma of it feels like being torn, but it is no more than suddenly having the ability to experience reality in a different way. Waiting for the end... for what? Cannot foretell. No longer flesh, no longer blood. Soul. Free.
— Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow
But this was fancy
—  she was succumbing to fancy in a way she hadn't done before.
A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space .... Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... The one test of the really weird is simply this - whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.
— Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien
We have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils.
— Arthur Machen, The Terror
While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary 
— David Brin, Glory Season
With his revelation,...I shattered into a million shards. I felt each piece as it splintered and separated from the whole like a glass I had broken the day before. Debris flew everywhere. It left me without any option but to pick each broken piece up, analyze it, and find out where it belonged. I had to find out where I belonged. Allison La Crosse - Warriors of the Cross
— T.R. Graves, Warriors of the Cross
If you don't believe it's elves, that's your problem. I know it's elves.
— Janet Taylor Lisle, Afternoon of the Elves
There are no mistakes in life" he answered. "Just lessons. Make sure you learn from this one.
— Robin Wayne Bailey, Shadowdance
I’ve told you that I’m a tricksy wight, and I am, my sweet. But there are those in the Seelie Court who would make me seem a very perfect knight.
— Emma Bull, War for the Oaks
Real life this fdar had taught me that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. But in the world of D&D, at least there was a rule book... By role-playing, we were in control, and our characters... wandered through places of danger, their destinies, ostensibly, within our grasp.
— Ethan Gilsdorf
RIDE A WHITE SWAN""Ride it on out like a bird in the skyway,Ride it on out like you were a bird,Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam,Ride it all out like you were a bird.Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old daysWear a tall hat and a Tattooed gownRide a white swan like the people of the Beltane,Wear your hair long,babe,you can't go wrong.Catch a bright star and place it on your forehead,Say a few spells and baby,there you go,Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder,And in the morning you'll know all you know.Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old daysWear a tall hat and a Tattooed gownRide a white swan like the people of the Beltane,Wear your hair long, babe ,you can't go wrong.Da di di da, da di di da
— Marc Bolan, Marc Bolan Lyric Book
As has already been noted, fantastic literature developed at precisely the moment when genuine belief in the supernatural was on the wane, and when the sources provided by folklore could safely be used as literary material. It is almost a necessity, for the writer as well as for the reader of fantastic literature, that he or she should not believe in the literal truth of the beings and objects described, although the preferred mode of literary expression is a naive realism. Authors of fantastic literature are, with a few exceptions, not out to convert, but to set down a narrative story endowed with the consistency and conviction of inner reality only during the time of the reading: a game, sometimes a highly serious game, with anxiety and fright, horror and terror.
— Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien
The shifting sands of the world... show how much the surrealists were drawn towards an interrogation of what reality actually is. Unlike fabulists of whatever hue, there is a materiality in surrealist writing that resolutely keeps it, one might say, 'down to earth'.
— Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
Taiki was watching the kings talk, feeling the kind of happiness that can only come after a long sorrow.
— Fuyumi Ono, The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind
I'm not out of touch with reality
— I've just got my eyes on eternity.
She was neither white nor black, Fyre nor Aquanite; she was a dame of the White King, and it was up to her, and her alone, to choose what path her life would take.
— Christine E. Schulze, The Prism of Ashlei
When I look at my bookcase and see the books upon the shelves, I think to myself, There is a God.
— Sully Tarnish, The Dragon and the Apprentice: A Wizard's Wager
Men may act as cruelly as dragons, but dragons will never act as men do.
— Steven Poore, The Heir to the North
My brain must have felt sorry for me, so it’d created the only type of guy I could touch—a fantasy one.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Cursed
It's not a question of can or can't. There are some things in life you just do.
— Lightning Claire Farron FF13
Fairy tales, fantasy, legend and myth...these stories, and their topics, and the symbolism and interpretation of those topics...these things have always held an inexplicable fascination for me," she writes. "That fascination is at least in part an integral part of my character — I was always the kind of child who was convinced that elves lived in the parks, that trees were animate, and that holes in floorboards housed fairies rather than rodents.You need to know that my parents, unlike those typically found in fairy tales — the wicked stepmothers, the fathers who sold off their own flesh and blood if the need arose — had only the best intentions for their only child. They wanted me to be well educated, well cared for, safe — so rather than entrusting me to the public school system, which has engendered so many ugly urban legends, they sent me to a private school, where, automatically, I was outcast for being a latecomer, for being poor, for being unusual. However, as every cloud does have a silver lining — and every miserable private institution an excellent library — there was some solace to be found, between the carved oak cases, surrounded by the well–lined shelves, among the pages of the heavy antique tomes, within the realms of fantasy.Libraries and bookshops, and indulgent parents, and myriad books housed in a plethora of nooks to hide in when I should have been attending math classes...or cleaning my room...or doing homework...provided me with an alternative to a reality I didn't much like. Ten years ago, you could have seen a number of things in the literary field that just don't seem to exist anymore: valuable antique volumes routinely available on library shelves; privately run bookshops, rather than faceless chains; and one particular little girl who haunted both the latter two institutions. In either, you could have seen some variation upon a scene played out so often that it almost became an archetype:A little girl, contorted, with her legs twisted beneath her, shoulders hunched to bring her long nose closer to the pages that she peruses. Her eyes are glued to the pages, rapt with interest. Within them, she finds the kingdoms of Myth. Their borders stand unguarded, and any who would venture past them are free to stay and occupy themselves as they would.
— Helen Pilinovsky
Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried: 'Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!' Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive...
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Fantasy and drama appeal to us. They are socially acceptable and make you feel good about yourself. Moreover, you get rewarded for being cleverly ignorant.
— Saurabh Sharma
There came a time near dawn on the eve of spring, and Luthien danced upon a green hill; and suddenly she began to sing. Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars, seeing the sun behind the walls of the world; and the song of Luthien released the bonds of winter, and the frozen waters spoke, and flowers sprang from the cold earth where he feet had passed. Then the spell of silence fell from Beren, and he called to her, crying Tinuviel; and the woods echoed the name.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
You can't be in my world...You live in this one.
— Donna Lynn Hope
I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either. I don't believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.
— Clarence Darrow
Victor wrapped his fingers over my hand, pressing his face against my palm. “You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met. I’m so incredibly proud of you.”“Who knew that one day the word someone would use to describe me is brave. Life is very unpredictable.” I chuckled. “There are many other words I could think of to describe you but I’m not really good at flattery.
— A.B. Whelan, Valley of Darkness Part 1 & Part 2
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among the makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower saying that all was well.It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins")
— Lord Dunsany, Monster Mix
I expect everyone in Boston has something like that ring, which is why I am glad I have never been to Boston.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White
When a mortal man breaks a people, it is always blamed on the gods.
— S.M. White, The Witch's Price
A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success.
— Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold
you cut me deep bitch,cut me like surgery.
— Kanye West
He's MINE", I howled. "Mine! And I'm his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don't you?"He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard.I turned my head to the side and spat instead. "I told you 'no', dammit. I told you I'd follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you'd take the way I felt. Well, you can't! Hammer and me - we're twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can't untangle us, and if you did, you'd have to break us! Don't you see what you've done? You tried to break Hammer! He's mine! My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don't care for me!
— Amy Lane, Hammer & Air
A female dragon’s tail is of the utmost importance to her. Male dragons find them irresistible. After all where do you think the term ‘Getting some tail’ came from?
— Sully Tarnish, The Dragon and the Apprentice: A Wizard's Wager
For nothing is evil in the beginning.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy.
— John Marsden, Tomorrow, When the War Began
For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
Demons exist,' he says simply, as if talking about the weather. 'They are real and they are dangerous. We hunt them when necessary and return them when we can.
— Bill Blais
Are you entirely sure of that knot?' asked Morveer. 'There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop'.'Twenty-eight strides', said Friendly.'What?''The drop'.A brief pause, 'That is not helpful'.
— Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold
Will they remember us, Aravan? Will Mankind remember us at all?" ... Mayhap, Gwylly, mayhap. Mayhap in their legends and their fables. Mayhap in naught but their dreams.
— Dennis L. McKiernan
Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That's why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There's not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer andthank the Gods it's them and not us.
— Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King
We fight monsters and unholy creatures for a living here. Grotesque, evil, violent, dangerous; they’re certainly all these things. And yet, we somehow manage to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning. The terror wears off. What was horrific becomes mundane. We lose ourselves to a numbed normalcy after a while, a self-inflicted detachment. You forget how you got here, what it was like before. And then someone comes along, someone new, someone who sees it all with fresh eyes, and it snaps you out of your daily coma, reminding you of what you’ve forgotten. Of what you’ve become.
— Bill Blais, No Good Deed
...and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language.
— Diana Wynne Jones, The Merlin Conspiracy
Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon's cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion's double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted towards wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the end, or whether, within the dark hall, the girl had begun to scream.
— Barbara Hambly, Bride of the Rat God
And to do something that helps your coven survive, even after your own death, is the greatest gift you can possibly give them…”--Angela from Angela’s Coven
— Bruce Jenvey
Eena had thought the whole idea of his picture was absolutely wonderful and had asked Willum what kind of animal she might be. He’d responded after only a moment of thought.
— “I think you’d be a crioness.”
I laughed under my breath, and it sounded bitter. “Listen to me. What am I talking about, worth it? Is any experience or bit of beauty worth the cost of my life? I know nothing but safety and self-preservation at all costs.”“And yet,” he said softly, “you’re risking everything to help me.
— Kate Avery Ellison
I’m in a secret underground hideout of a group of monster hunters, filled with magical totems, brass monkeys that move and enough firepower to take over a small country.
— Bill Blais, No Good Deed
You want me to join your group of demon hunters," I can’t believe I just said that out loud, "because of a can of pepper spray and a boat load of luck? You’re insane.
— Bill Blais
I'm sorry I ruined your homecoming."He kissed me once more and then shook his head. "The only thing that could ruin this is not being with you.
— Markelle Grabo, The Spell Master
You're still the same Ramsey I danced with," he said softly.
— Markelle Grabo, The Spell Master
As long as he is around, I don't fit into your life." - Nathan
— Markelle Grabo, The Spell Master
From the dark forest that bordered the soft ploughed fields, came a low cry that did not belong to any animal. It was accompanied by the sound of branches bending and snapping, and the splintering of wood as trees were crushed or toppled onto their sides.
— Peter James West, Information Cloud
Rachel Henson stood facing him, immaculate in her uniform and ready for duty as always. She looked as though she had spent her whole life preparing for this very moment - she always did.
— Peter James West, Information Cloud
Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps. I’ve got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs.I’m dead.
— Bill Blais
What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?
— Terry Pratchett
The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication. The idea has been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off.There are no maps. You can't map a sense of humour. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.
— Terry Pratchett
I am not Cugel the Clever for nothing!
— Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth
Turns out that once you kill a god, people want to talk to you. Paranormal insurance salesmen with special "godslayer" term life policies. Charlatan's with "godproof" armor and extraplanar safe houses for rent. But most notably, other gods...
— Kevin Hearne
We are in this fairyland on sufferance
—  it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.
In your life, right here and now, things like mermaids, fairies, witches and monsters are nothing but fairytales told to your grandchildren and stories you heard from your own grandparents as children. They exist only in your imagination. Did you ever think that there is a chance all this was once real, that it all existed? Perhaps yes, but you would then consider such thoughts irrational, that even if you were to believe it and try telling someone they would think you for mad. In my world those creatures are real – I’m real, and I am here to tell you of a story that happened in eons past in the majestic island of Aster." - Queen of Merfolk Asteria - Ninemia
— Marilena Mexi
I can see the headline now: Archangel Busts Were Whisperer.
— Stacy Mantle, Shepherd's Moon
Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us al, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.
— Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams
You don’t have to bewitch me, Aiden. I like you already.
— Lita Burke, Tredan's Bane
Fantasy stories will always be popular, as there are always readers who are willing to escape, freely, to the worlds that the authors create, and spend time with the characters we give life to.
— Jason Ellis
What I knew for sure was that he had a quick temper, a cocky attitude, and a southern accent... Apparently he also has a pet cougar.
— Stacy Mantle, Shepherd's Moon
I beg your pardon," I said. "But you do intend to eat me?
— Claudia J. Edwards, Bright and Shining Tiger
The bleached ceilings, walls, and floors gleam in perfection. Drained of color, wiped of contamination, forever untainted they exist; a cold reminder of my purity.
— Celeste Simone, Oriana's Eyes
The woman turns away; one wing blackens like an onyx gem while the other glows white like a bright spotlight. She flies into the sky, leaving the crowd staring in astonishment. Angels fly away in two directions. Half make a black storm of moving, twisting shapes. The other half forms a white-as-snow moving cloud. The ranks are divided.
— Laura Kreitzer, Abyss
I am only a dead Sciomancer, but I must warn you of fire and kisses.
— Lita Burke, Tredan's Bane
There’s nothing to be scared of, right Akhol?”He said nothing as he stepped toward the rushing water that rolled around a big rock and was swallowed whole by impenetrable darkness.“Right?” Andrew repeated, his voice swallowed by the sound of rushing water.Akhol didn’t respond again. He tapped a foot above the water before he stepped in and disappeared beneath the surface in one fluid motion.
— Laura Kreitzer, Abyss
I blinked at him just casually talking about my new sex life with his genie-shiny head, and I knew at any second I would break into hysterics.
— Laura Kreitzer, Abyss
A part of me sought the light in all the people I knew, but with the Shadows, it was like bringing them back from a subterfuge comma. Literally tearing the veil of blackness down and showing them the luminescence of light.
— Laura Kreitzer, Abyss
We should follow every supply that runs into the particular lake below, going upstream in terms of we can. When we do not find Drakes’ path, or even an additional, we should come back straight along,look yourself upward an additional way to obtain foods,and then do a similar for the next water for the south.
— Chayada Welljaipet, Hill's Adventure
Roads go ever ever on,Over rock and under tree,By caves where never sun has shone,By streams that never find the sea;Over snow by winter sown,And through the merry flowers of June,Over grass and over stone,And under mountains of the moon.Roads go ever ever onUnder cloud and under star,Yet feet that wandering have goneTurn at last to home afar.Eyes that fire and sword have seenAnd horror in the halls of stoneLook at last on meadows greenAnd trees and hills they long have known
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
But in the name of all that is holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?" murmured Kohlrabi.Because I'd been hording words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly on bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them, and then he turned up using words like "epiphany" and "amaranth." Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn't since they burned my father's books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers..."Mosca shrugged."He's got a way with words.
— Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night
You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue.
— Neil Gaiman
The sun hitched up her trousers and soldiered on up into the sky. September squinted at it and wondered if the sun here was different than the sun in Nebraska. It seemed gentler, more golden, deeper. The shadows it cast seemed more profound. But September could not be sure. When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean that it is brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Without thinking about it at all, Harry stepped in front of Hermione.There was an intake of breath from behind him, and then a moment later Hermione brushed past and stepped in front of him. "Run, Harry!" she said. "Boys shouldn't have to be in danger.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
You won't find the tales I bear in any books . . . My tales are from the Moon Realm.” —Ebb Autumn
— Richard Due, The Moon Coin
But it is cute. It's such a boy thing to do.Drop dead.Aw, you say the most romantic things.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan—punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish.
— Terri Windling, Welcome to Bordertown
The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.
— Barbara Hambly, The Silicon Mage
Like wine, Provençal magic had its own distinctive terroir. It was rich and chaotic and romantic. It was a night-magic, confabulated out of moons and silver, wine and blood, knights and fairies, wind and rivers and forests. It concerned itself with good and evil but also with the vast intermediate realm in between, the realm of mischief.
— Lev Grossman, The Magician King
That’s when I notice Cheryl and Mickey cuddled up on the couch. She’s leaning on his shoulder, his arm around her, her leg across his lap. Cheryl throws glances at Kerry that say, “Look at me!” while Kerry shoots a “You go, girl!” smirk right back. I think of CK, how he and I often sat like that. Not because we were seconds from making out or wanted to look like a couple, but just out of a deep, platonic connection. My heart hits a higher notch on the ache-o-meter, my teeth sear into my bottom lip, and then something inside me snaps as cleanly as a crayon.
— Kea Alwang, Treehugger
But—" yelped Twizbang, “Greydor will eat us!
— Richard Due, The Moon Coin
So I’m figuring this is death. The little air left in the cockpit is toxic with marthenine, and I can only wonder how much of it I have breathed in. Is my throat becoming raw hamburger? My lungs, oatmeal?
— Kea Alwang, Treehugger
An Enforcer’s style is to destroy all magicians in sight and lap up their essence like a starved cur.
— Lita Burke, Wrath, Prequel to Tredan's Bane
When I was her age," Munro said to Eilidh, "I was chasing frogs."Oron Chuckled. "When I was your age, I was chasing frogs. Come. We have things to discuss.
— India Drummond, Azuri Fae
Trust no one," said Sullivan, "especially Teachers.
— A.J. Arias, Robbie Velez and The Key to Rocket City
We all know how it says it’s going to end, Dreamer, but no one knows for sure. That’s up to you, and your friends. It is the Four who shall decide whether or not it comes true, not a bunch of words written on a piece of paper. Not even,” he turned the book around so that its insides were facing her, “if it’s written in on very old, very large, dusty paper.
— Chani Lynn Feener, Where Thy Dark Eye Glances
Answer me immediately or I'll start cutting away everything that's pretty on you...and then put it back.
— Richard Finney, Wind Raider Volume 1
You retain the Ki. Whether or not you become a warrior is for you to discover.
— Richard Finney, Wind Raider Volume 1
Big writers become a kind of shared climate.
— Adam Gopnik
Stars are the souls of old sailors. They plot the skies and guide the wayward home.
— Brian Rathbone, The Dawning of Power
Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.
— Joseph Conrad
Until recently the locus of sexual fantasy was peopled with images actually glimpsed or were sensations actually felt, or private imaginings taken from suggestions in the real world, a dream well where weightless images from it floated, transformed by imagination. It prepared children, with these hints and traces of other people's bodies, to become adults and enter the landscape of adult sexuality and meet the lover face to face. Lucky men and women are able to keep a pathway clear to that dream well, peopling it with scenes and images that meet them as they get older, created with their own bodies mingling with other bodies; they choose a lover because of a smell from a coat, a way of walking, the shape of a lip, belong in their imagined interior and resonate back in time deep into the bones that recall childhood and early adolescent imagination.
— Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
Down through this verdant land Carter walked at evening, and saw twilight float up from the river to the marvelous golden spires of Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the southern gate, and was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three dreams beyond belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's steep mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked; through a wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter amidst curved and undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the heavenward towers. Lights shone through grated and balconied windows, and, the sound of lutes and pipes stole timid from inner courts where marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his way, and edged down through darker streets to the river, where at an old sea tavern he found the captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams. There he bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there he stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of that inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of old wars and forgotten gods.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran which slope down to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness wherein the King of Ilek-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once a year in a golden palanquin to pray to the god of Oukranos, who sang to him in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All of jasper is that temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts, its seven pinnacled towers, and its inner shrine where the river enters through hidden channels and the god sings softly in the night. Many times the moon hears strange music as it shines on those courts and terraces and pinnacles, but whether that music be the song of the god or the chant of the cryptical priests, none but the King of Ilek-Vad may say; for only he had entered the temple or seen the priests. Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carven and delicate fane was silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream and the hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted sun.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
It is our time, our task and our destiny - from "Opoponax Dreams
— Genieve Dawkins
You speak good words, child, but sometimes what lies within is much darker. The line between justice and revenge is then. Justice is order; revenge is chaos. If revenge is your innermost desire, you will be destroyed upon entering into the hall
— Amira Aly, Egypt: The Uprising (The Battle for Maat, #1)
The rulers were using ancient knowledge to manipulate the amygdaloidal primal fear. They ruled through fear, preternatural fear created through soft, invisible waves designed to alternate the brain’s almond. They kept the people spellbound
— Amira Aly, Egypt: The Uprising
Been lickin’ peanut-butter spoons? Maybe I should call you butterfingers. It has a better ring than Hella Shella. - Tran'Answer my question, Tran. Right now. Or I show you just what these fingers'--I wiggled my fingers under his nose-- 'can really do.' I took a step closer, erasing the distance between us. 'And let me tell you, emo boy, you are not going to like it. Let’s just say, that peanut butter I ate, freshly made.' I licked my lips with care. 'I’m actually quite skilled when it comes to crushing nuts.' - Shella
— Krista Alasti, Taming Shadows
The skeleton picked up the second skull, so worn as to barely be recognisable as such. The vertebrae fell and rolled like beads from a string.
— J.A. Clement, On Dark Shores: The Lady
Shandy looked ahead. Blackbeard, apparently willing to get the explanation later, had picked up his oars and was rowing again. 'May I presume to suggest,' yelled Shandy giddily to Davies, 'that we preoceed the hell out of here with all due haste.' Davies pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead and sat down on the rower's thwart. 'My dear fellow consider it done.
— Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides
People that are lazy don't get anything accomplished. It's People like me that are reliable.
— Richard W. Todd
First of all, you're dead. Secondly, I cut off your head. Thirdly... yes, I know that rhymed, you really don't have to tell me.
— Gayle Ramage
God, why do I bother trying to help you? It’s not like you appreciate it. It’s not like the word ‘thanks’ is in your vocabulary. It’s like you’re not capable of being nice to someone you decided to despise when you were six-years-old. Sure, about twelve years have passed, but what’s time compared to your rock-headed mind? - Tran
— Krista Alasti, Taming Shadows
We've got an unbeatable team."- Sauron
— Robert Lynn Asprin, Myth Directions
Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls 'the fantastic,' between 'the marvelous' and 'the uncanny.' According to Todorov, 'The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.' Once the event is satisfactorily explained (and sometimes it is never explained), we have left the fantastic for an adjacent genre - either 'the uncanny,' where the apparently supernatural is revealed as illusory, or 'the marvelous,' where the laws of ordinary reality must be revised to incorporate the supernatural. As long as uncertainty reigns, however, we are in the ambiguous realm of the fantastic.
— Howard Kerr, The Haunted Dusk
The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday legality
— Roger Caillois, Au Coeur Du Fantastique
Many of the best fantastic stories begin in a leisurely way, set in commonplace surroundings, with exact, meticulous descriptions of an ordinary background, much as in a 'realistic' tale. Then a gradual - or it may be sometimes a shockingly abrupt - change becomes apparent, and the reader begins to realize that what is being described is alien to the world he is accustomed to, that something strange has crept or leapt into it. This strangeness changes the world permanently and fundamentally.
— Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien
The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.
— Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien
Imagination shrinks from the consequences.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural encounter in fiction seems to reflect some deeper disorientations in the culture at large.
— Howard Kerr, The Haunted Dusk
It should be particularly stressed that the fantastic makes no sense in an out-and-out strange world. To imagine the fantastic in it is even impossible. In a world full of marvels the extraordinary loses its power.
— Roger Caillois, Au Coeur Du Fantastique
What are you about?" said the vehicle as a panel popped open to reveal delicate components. "I am not accustomed to such usage."The little man said nothing, but began to rearrange connections and sever some linkages within the autocab's mechanism. The vehicle lurched and then spiraled down to a meadow bordered by trees."I will be compelled to summon assist-" said the car, then broke off as Gaskarth made a final adjustment. The autocab dropped the remaining few inches to the grass, and the dwarf twisted the emergency release handle to open the doors. Filidor followed him out of the autocab."Who am I?" inquired the car. "Have I a function?""Perhaps you are a type of bird," said Gaskarth. "If so, it is your function to fly."The autocab digested this information briefly, then lifted slightly. "Experimentation tends to support the hypothesis," it said, and flew in widening circles out of their ken.
— Matthew Hughes, Fools Errant
Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.
— Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien
(Washington) Irving was only the first of the writers of the American ghostly tale to recognize that the supernatural, exactly because its epistemological status is so difficult to determine, challenged the writer to invent a commensurately sophisticated narrative technique.
— Howard Kerr, The Haunted Dusk
But the recurrent ambiguity of the American tale of the supernatural reveals both a fascination with the possibility of numinous experience and a perplexity about whether there was, in fact, anything numinous to be experienced. Writers often delighted in leading readers into, but not out of, the haunted dusk of the borderland.
— Howard Kerr, The Haunted Dusk
I searched my mind for the right visualization. I knew it had to start with what I put in my head. That is where all my accomplishments are formed.
— Tina M. Randolph, Maze of Existence
The fantastic in literature doesn't exist as a challenge to what is probable, but only there where it can be increased to a challenge of reason itself: the fantastic in literature consists, when all has been said, essentially in showing the world as opaque, as inaccessible to reason on principle. This happens when Piranesi in his imagined prisons depicts a world peopled by other beings than those for which it was created. ("On the Fantastic in Literature")
— Lars Gustafsson
It was all I could do to keep from lunging across the table and pressing my shuttering lips against his burning flesh. My palms were sweating profusely causing me to have to wipe them against my jeans under the table. Those last few seconds had felt like a lifetime in pause.
— Jennifer L. Brown, Fighting to Escape
The crimson leaf that blew past looked the twin of the one she'd picked up in the palace courtyard: a bloodied hand.
— S.M. Jonas, Crimson Leaf
As Ariel recounted the events of her dream, two magnificent, batlike wings grew from the backs of her shoulders, stretched as if preparing to fly, then retreated back into their host. The sound heard when the wings disappear is the giggling of Alanna, who watched the event much the same way I did, in rapt wonder.
— Don A. Martinez, Dinétah Dragon
People with imagination
— Arthur Levine, Johnny Oops
One man carries salvation and damnation from the desert.
— Matthew Sawyer, Pazuzu - Manifestation
While his brain lay slowly dying, Bevan felt his body come back to life.
— Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, The Deadwalk
I believe you to be Filidor Vesh," said the dwarf."You are entitled to your beliefs, however ill-founded," Filidor replied. "No doubt you will wish to search further for this Vesh, rather than impose your presence upon a man called hence by urgent affairs."The dwarf transferred his grip from Filidor's mantle to his arm. His gaze swept quickly over the young man's features. "This belief is supported by the evidence, since you answer to a point the description furnished me.""You are plainly the dupe of some prankster, who abuses the dignity of your years by sending you on a fool's errand," said Filidor. "Were I you, I would seek out the rascal and thrash him.
— Matthew Hughes, Fools Errant
Here's a thought. You answer what I ask and I keep not killing you." - Antiope Flint - DREAMNASIUM
— Geoffrey Thorne