c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It wasn’t like that at all!” argued the Sleuth, looking around for support. “It was a heroic, selfless act of spectacular bravery! I should be worshipped like a god! Immortalised in song!” He struck a dramatic pose, “One man, alone and outnumbered, sacrificed himself for the greater good…”“Immortalised in song, eh?” chuckled Mick. “How about ‘ridiculed in nursery rhymes’?
— Aaron D'Este, Weapon of Choice
Aelin is alive.
— Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire
People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
You may choose to live in a world of fantasy if you like, my dear, but I am a realist.
— Ransom Riggs, Hollow City
There's only so long you can live in a fantasy world before the reality comes along to sharply put you back in your place.
— Giovanna Fletcher, You're the One That I Want
You’re so unfair, Michiru…To leave into your own world…Don’t leave me alone…-Haruka Tenoh/Sailor Uranus
— Naoko Takeuchi
And with the melody came the unmistakable sound of water slapping against the rocks far below us, slowly eroding the foundation of Port Coire and everything I loved.
— Sarah Glenn Marsh, Fear the Drowning Deep
Tell yourself the stories you need to tell. But don't be fooled by them. Never live your own lies.
— David Gaider
Why do you have such a nice Bible?” Kelsea asked.“The Bible is a book, Kelsea, a book that has influenced mankind for thousands of years. It deserves to be preserved in a good edition, just like any other important book.”“Do you believe it’s true?”“No.”“Then why did I have to read it?” Kelsea demanded, feeling resentful. It hadn’t been a particularly good book, and it was heavy; she had hauled the damned thing from room to room for days. “What was the point?”“To know your enemy, Kelsea. Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.
— Erika Johansen
That is when you know you have reached the point of no return, when you began to stalk a ghost.
— S.R. Gibbs, The Inner Kingdom
It's rude to stare," said the troll. Its mouth opened with a little crest of foam, and shut again in exactly the same way that water closes over a stone. "Is it? Why?" asked Rincewind. How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill?
— Terry Pratchett
We keep electing council members for appearance sake, it doesn’t mean anything, and it is just a show for the people, so that they may sleep well at night with their delusion of peace.
— S.R. Gibbs, The Inner Kingdom
i dont live in a fantasy; just a dream, that's to hard for some to believe.
— Nikki Rowe, Once a Girl, Now a Woman
Clearing his throat “It is very improper for a lady to open the door, to a person of the opposite sex in her… sleeping attire.”“Improper? I look like I am wearing a rug,” I exclaimed, as I motioned at the calf-length thick red fabric; that I was wearing with wide shoulder straps. “Secondly, I don’t see you as human, let alone a man. You are more like a homicidal invention, of my hormonal teenage nightmare; which I can’t seem to be able to awake from.
— S.R. Gibbs, The Inner Kingdom
Dragons were a problem sometimes, but they only came on Tuesdays, so you could work around them.
— Mike  Carey
Death is but a dream and life is merely the daydream of death.
— Mike Dickenson, The Dreamer's Lotus
So these are the fresh meat, eh?” Zuko smirked. I cringed when he said fresh meat. How demeaning. “Well, I don’t know how well all of you can fight. So I’ll find out the quickest and simplest way.” He raised a scarred arm and pointed it at all of us, “ATTACK THE FRESH MEAT!
— L.  Benitez, Shinobi 7: Trials of a Warrior
I can't imagine why knowledge, truth and love should be so much of a secret
— Lloyd Alexander
Rachel opened her mouth to respond, but the head cut her off.
— Brandon Mull
We pretended to be of mud instead of stars. We pretended not to fly.
— Shana Abe, The Dream Thief
We all go through our entire lives not knowing. Wondering. Trying.Untile we sleep.
— David Gaider
Never scheme with a conniving dragon!
— Becca Mann
Gym is a fantasy place for me,gym is the place where i can do what ever i want.nobody stops you.nobody irritate you.you can lift weight what ever you want to choose.during exercises when you look your self in mirror and some people saw you.and think that he has nice built.that moment you proud on yourself.
— Sher-E-Yazdan
The world of a cat is unlike any other. What is seen through their eyes cannot be understood by anyone besides another cat. Their world is filled with secrets and adventures that are always present and forever changing. To look at the world as a cat is to look through the veil of reality.
— Alex G. Zarate
All clichés aside, sometimes a girl just needed to cry in the rain.
— Ali Harper, Beautiful Bedlam
Be warned. Beware. Enter this kingdom only if you dare.
— Diana S. Zimmerman, Kandide: The Lady's Revenge
She could just kill them. If she did they would be healed again in moments ☥ She'd better let sleeping demons lie. "Enlightenment." Coming soon
— Kim Cormack, Sweet Sleep
Ever heard the tale of Neptune's Children?
— Mark Simo, RKU: Not to Be Seen or Heard by the Rest of the World
I'm a weak man, Navani. I really am. If I give myself a few feet of leeway, I burst through all of my prohibitions.
— Dalinar Kholin
The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff.The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just stories about a guy drinking tea and staring out the window at the rain while he thinks about his mother. And the truth is a lot of literary fiction is just that. Like, kind of pointless, angsty, emo, masturbatory bullshit.However, we should not be judged by our lowest common denominators. And also you should not fall prey to the fallacious thinking that literary fiction is literary and all other genres are genre. Literary fiction is a genre, and I will fight to the death anyone who denies this very self-evident truth.So, is there a lot of fantasy that is raw shit out there? Absolutely, absolutely, it’s popcorn reading at best. But you can’t deny that a lot of lit fic is also shit. 85% of everything in the world is shit. We judge by the best. And there is some truly excellent fantasy out there. For example, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet with the ghost; Macbeth, ghosts and witches; I’m also fond of the Odyessey; Most of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, Gargantua and Pantagruel.Honestly, fantasy existed before lit fic, and if you deny those roots you’re pruning yourself so closely that you can’t help but wither and die.
— Patrick Rothfuss
He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods
—  the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.
The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose....it made the stories look on the surface like 'a mere bubble of nonsense' within which it was possible to 'utter harsh truths, to say what you dare' about the state of women's lives. Because they were just stories, right? Harmless little fantasies?
— Christine Heppermann, Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty
I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien on Fairy-stories
love an invisible force that makes you realize that reality is better than fantasy.
— Aonymous girl
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Lightthrough whom is splintered from a single Whiteto many hues, and endlessly combinedin living shapes that move from mind to mind.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien on Fairy-stories
His eyes go wide while a gasp of wonder passes his lips. He turns his body fully toward us. His lips moving like a fish out of water, gasping for breath. He gives his head a shake and stutters out, “Mer—mermaids. There are fish with women’s bodies or—women with fish bodies sitting upon the rocks. I—I never knew...
— A.R. Von, Lady's Destiny
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien on Fairy-stories
Fantasy imposes order on the universe. Or, at least, it superimposes order on the universe. And it is a human order. Reality tells us that we exist for a brief, beleaguered span in a cold infinity; fantasy tells us that the figures in the foreground are important. Fantasy peoples the alien Outside, and it doesn’t matter a whole lot if it peoples it with good guys or bad guys. Putting ‘Hy-Brasil’ on the map is a step in the right direction, but if you can’t manage that, then ‘Here Be Dragons is better than nothing. Better than the void.
— Terry Pratchett
Half of what I write is imaginative reality. The other half is realized impossibilities. Blended into one, these make a fantasy.
— Nicole Sager
No doubt you've experienced something similar in books, movies, novels–whatever you use as an excuse to get away, to suspend reality. Literary characters, like these projections, draw you in and cultivate feelings of friendship on your part. Although, no matter how much you learn about them, how much time you spend with them–how far you can see into their thoughts and words, how they interact with others, their looks, what they wear–they will never, ever know you.
— Chess Desalls, Travel Glasses
In fact the Gods were as puzzled by all this as the wizards were, but they were powerless to do anything and in any case were engaged in an eons-old battle with the Ice Giants, who had refused to return the lawnmower.
— Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
Guilt makes people do the weirdest things. It must be awful to have a conscience.
— Angelika Rust, Once A Rat
There are many who are hesitant and say, 'I don't witches and I don't like wizards; I only like the real world.' That's because you haven't been to the fake one yet.
— polandbananasBOOKS
Reading a fantasy book is a commitment...a commitment to adventure...a commitment to bravery. You make that commitment and you reap the benefits...of epicness.
— polandbananasBOOKS
Ah, life in medieval times! Yeah, we only have to worry about losing our heads every day.
— David Kuklis, Escape from Netherworld
This time, I sat next to a pixie girl called Takara, who had pinkish hair and wore a bright pink dress to match. She was the first forest-dweller I had seen wearing jewellery: she was wearing a necklace and bracelet of finely worked crystal beads. When she noticed my interest, she removed her bracelet and held it out to me. “Sophiel, I would be so pleased if you would wear this!”I was surprised by this kind and very selfless gesture; after all, I had not been admiring her jewels with any intention of asking her to part with them!“You’re very kind, Takara, but I was merely admiring your handiwork!” I said, trying politely to refuse her gift. “Mitsuko told me that you make your jewellery yourself. You’re very talented, they’re really lovely pieces, but I wouldn’t want to take them away from you. It’s you that makes these jewels really beautiful!
— A.O. Esther, Elveszett lelkek
How's daydreaming affecting nightmares?? Showing the light where is all dark!
— Ana Claudia Antunes, Dearer Mirror
The only way to get the ending you want is to write your own story.
— Ashley Ford
People won't change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain changing brings.
— Just B. Jordan, Never To Live
I threw my hands on my hips, shocked by the irony. A Mather helping a Greensmith? Hell was freezing over somewhere beneath our feet and every kind of farm animal was sprouting wings to fly.
— Leigh Goff, Disenchanted
Azerowut, I must tend to an urgently urgent business and a business that is urgent most urgently. Watch over my tent with extreme care and care that is caring in the extreme, and do not, under any circumstantial circumstances, allow anyone and his brother to be within an uncomfortably uncomfortable distance of her door. --Master Kwadile
— Michael Joseph Murano, Age of the Seer
Why do I feel like this is our destiny. There must be a reason why we have become our characters.
— David Kuklis, Escape from Netherworld
I hate goblins.
— Seth Tucker, Winston & Baum and the Secret of the Stone Circle
Erasing is exercise for the hands
— Elizabeth Rawls
It is only by choice that our true nature is revealed.
— J.D. Netto, The Whispers of the Fallen
The fault in our stars is the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy, fairytales and magic in movies. Even religion asks us to believe in the most unlikely of situations. However, despite all the great movies we love, we choose to see so many real life spiritual experiences as delusion, mania, psychosis or wishful thinking. Our society gives great devotion to the arts. However, they solve so many problems with realism, rather than giving into the possibilty of God's plan for a person, that doesn't involve their theological views about how God helps write his children's stories.
— Shannon L. Alder
Oh God, this is my fantasy! Where those just-friend boys suddenly realize they lov
— Cammie McGovern, Say What You Will
You know how it is -- you get older, you get wiser, you start to ask yourself 'is it any use being able to summon creatures of the nether deeps when I could be watching BBC 4?
— Kate Griffin
What kind of life is that? Do you know? Do you? Because I know. I lived that life. For years I lived it. Without you. And I've never been more miserable. I'd rather fight everyday to keep you near me than have you walk away. I'd rather pay that price, Max. I'm not afraid to pay it. I can't believe you're standing here telling me that you are." ~Layla to Max; TORN
— Laney McMann, Torn
Thus, she had learned a romance book was fiction. A hero who truly cared for the heroine was called a fantasy.
— Cherise Sinclair, Show Me, Baby
Expand your world. (Stories about wizards and spells) are very frequently about power relationships...
— Margaret Atwood
If you do nothing more in life do what you love. It may not make you rich, but it will always make you happy.
— Robin A. Dilks, Racheal Awakened
My father used to say that when hunting a shark, we should either kill it or let it go. To cage a shark is sheer cruelty, and I cannot live like a shark in a cage any longer.
— Micheal Joseph Murano
There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones.
— Brooke Burgess, The Cat's Maw
I can’t change my past, nobody can, I can make my future better
— Suren Hakobyan, Edge of End
I think one who thrives on death may be defeated by life.Elswyth, from A Precarious Journey Into Magic
— Jenna Lindsey, A Precarious Journey Into Magic
Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.
— Michael Moorcock, The Knight of the Swords
All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call 'civilization.
— Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy
I don't have to stand and walk, I only have to open my eyes.
— Just B. Jordan, Never To Live
We are all of the same substance, the same life. Though there are many differences between us, those are merely the shadows that delineate our boundaries. Our light is the same.
— Sally Wiener Grotta, The Winter Boy
Look At Only The Reality Because Reality Is Better Than Fantasy
— Sushil Singh, System dynamics: a practical approach for managerial problems
Curious about these new entities, the elementals asked why the gods were in the shape they were."We are bipedal," Erebus said. "We wish to be distinguished from the animals.""What are animals?" an elemental asked."We're not sure yet, but they will have more than two legs. Unless we give them less than two... or maybe not. Anyway, it's just a concept we're playing with at the moment.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
Ready?" Aeron called over.Michael span to see him giving a thumbs up to the booth. His eye was drawn down to the huge war hammer hanging from his other hand."How about we start with a chase? Try to touch the far wall and get back here before I cripple you." He smiled as if he'd said 'tag you', not 'cripple you'.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
You live and die in the batting of my eyes. You cast a wavering shadow over the snow for a day. I cast my shadow over empires across eons." - Orm Hinn Langi the Dragon
— Lou Anders, Frostborn
Corvid looked up at her. "Oh, hello Doris.""Gertie, dear," she said. "They call me Gertie.""You used to be Doris," Corvid said as a matter of fact."Who?" She seemed unsure of what she was being told."Doris, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys?" Corvid carried on when he saw her blank expression. "You must remember Nereus? Your husband?"Nothing."You gave birth to fifty sea nymphs. I guess sea nymphs come out slippy and hydrodynamic, but even so, fifty of them? That must stick in the memory as the day before you felt really sore for a month or so?"Doris thought about it for a moment. "It does ring a bell. Sorry, who are you?
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
If we must die, then let us die fighting a battle worthy of remembrance in the tales of our descendants!
— Daniel Adorno, The Blade Heir
I've done this sort of thing before. Not prophecies so much, but you'd be surprised how many people want to realign their ancestral lines to seem nobler, or rewrite their family history to remove more morally questionable episodes." He paused to recall a recent rewrite. "One lord wanted the murderers removed from his family line. His family was so corrupt, he ended up with three virgin births, two generations removed entirely and a lady who gave birth at the age of two. Still, no one questions it as there is evidence in the archives." Bubo smugly tapped a book. "There is one thing though, faking a prophecy in the past is easy, you already know the result. How will you make this come true in the future?""I have someone in mind for it, but I'm not sure he'll go for it. But then prophecy is all optional anyway." Corvid looked up as if a thought had occurred to him. "I'd best go check on my man, I've not met him yet.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
I don't understand humans." Caradoc shook his head. "It takes their brightest minds decades to plan an unmanned voyage to the nearest planet, which can take a year to travel each way. Yet they expect there to be aliens travelling distances it takes light decades to reach us, just for a weekend of bum fun with a total stranger without asking their permission, before dropping them off where they found them. They're just dying to believe the weirdest, least plausible things possible.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
I'll make my own magic
— A.D.Y. Howle
When you stop being owned by your emotions you'll stop feeling vulnerable to people. ~ Remiel
— Aria J. Wolfe, The Coalition Episodes 1-4
I'll make my own magic'" - A.D.Y.Howle
— A.D.Y. Howle
Come in, Martise." Silhara's voice was almost sibilant in the darkness as he tagged on her hand. "There are no soul eaters here." No, she thought. Only heart thieves.
— Grace Draven, Master of Crows
Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don't have it.
— Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear the pain of loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
— Margaret Weis, Dragons of Winter Night
I walked forward simply because there was no going back.
— Emma Raveling, Ondine Quartet Collection: Volume 1
I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called ‘Fifty Shades of Men’. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn’t the sexiest part of the book. “Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her SUV is devouring this book like the candy she won’t let herself eat.” I had written. “It’s not the fantasy of an impossibly handsome guy who can give you an orgasm just by stroking your nipples. It is instead the fantasy of a guy who can give you everything. Hapless, clueless, barely able to remain upright without assistance, Ana Steele is that unlikeliest of creatures, a college student who doesn’t have an email address, a computer, or a clue. Turns out she doesn’t need any of those things. Here is the dominant Christian Grey and he’ll give her that computer plus an iPad, a beamer, a job, and an identity, sexual and otherwise. No more worrying about what to wear. Christian buys her clothes. No more stress about how to be in the bedroom. Christian makes those decisions. For women who do too much—which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books—this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose your adventure for you.
— Jennifer Weiner, All Fall Down
I don't have expensive tastes – just bloody ones.– Vampire Dragul Mangorian
— John Matsui, Late Bite
When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.
— Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language
I am chaos in this ordered society, the flaw in a carefully wrought plan. I am turbulence in the queen's eternal river.
— Eugie Foster, Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast
Magic is always impossible. It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That's why it is magic.
— Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant
Writing is a form of running away. Running away to a place you made with your own hand.
— Y.K. Raikou
... where I walked, the frost shaped itself to my will, dancing in the air like music over water.
— Eugie Foster, Beautiful Winter
A heart filled with light will always be in the middle of darkness. But, once it shines more brightly, there's nothing to be afraid. You, are the one who will conquer it.
— Y.K. Raikou
I'm not sure if there's truly a name for this kind of place aside from it being anything but remarkable.
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
We hear rumors of a man who leads a rebellion in the forest, determined to drive the invader out. It's said wherever wolf howls or hawk cries, he appears.
— Claire M. Banschbach, The Rise of Aredor
It’s all short, sweet and simple, but it’s all a moment’s worth.
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
The difference between a dream and a fantasy is action.
— Orrin Woodward
You all know why we’re here. The time has come for action. To be sure we are prepared, Maeve and I will be heading out to scout conditions. We shouldn’t be gone more than a fortnight and in our absence, Fianna will be seeing to things. If we don’t return, you all know what to do. Look after yourselves and be ready.
— Melissa Simmons, Resistance
The Boy’s head was spinning. Raul was real, and quite possibly not kindly disposed to him, as Marama’s potential heir and jail-breaker. The sailors worshiped Marama, who controlled the tides and commanded them through dreams? The Geolwe collected clouds and lived in the sky? And did the captain just say there were mountains in the sea? Did he mean under the water? Downing the drink in front of him, he began to laugh. It was all just so hopelessly un-real. Anselt and the captain stared for a moment, then found his mirth infectious. Before long they were laughing too, and the sound of their merriment sailed through the night and out to greet the rolling waves, wrapping itself around the ship like a cloud.
— J.J. Gadd, Lunation
Months passed away without dreams about the Agni Ki…or my father. My new life began to find new rhythm. But then…as suddenly as it always does…everything changed.
— Dave Roman, The Last Airbender: Prequel - Zuko's Story
We'll free as many as we can and build an army in the forest. It might take years, but I won't rest until every last Calorin is gone from these shores and my father is restored to the throne. - Corin
— Claire M. Banschbach, The Rise of Aredor
Writing is a form of running away. Running away to a place you made by your own hand.
— Y.K. Raikou
Know, Goodwife, that Faerie is shaped by storytellers. Their fantasies, their dreams give my realm life. We were dying, all of us, from the smallest nixie to highborn sidhe, for want of a storyteller.
— Eugie Foster, The Storyteller's Wife
Writing is like running away. Running away to a place you made with your own hand.
— YKRaikou
Am I an old man who changed into a butterfly, or a butterfly who thinks he was once an old man?
— Dennis Vickers, Mikawadizi Storms
Staying relaxed was helping him cope with the drug induced juddering vision that could be best described as being like a Hitchcockian visual effect operated by a hyperactive squirrel that shook the whole universe closer and farther away. If you went with it, it was quite pleasant, as long as you didn't introduce any lateral movement like turning your head or the car. This caused the universe to try and slide away from underneath you. The other side effect was the constant feeling you ought to try to twist your head off, in a good way.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
As far as I'm concerned, you're changing the fate of another human being. Maybe he isn't meant to be elected to office. Maybe humans deserve to live with electing the wrong person.
— Evette Davis, Woman King
It was one of those decisions that shouldn't have been so easy to get so wrong. Go on your own or take the half wasted waif. She was wearing denim hotpants with a pink vest top, and was hanging off his arm, more for stability than closeness, so he propped her up against the wall next to the counter and reached inside his coat pocket for his badge. It was definitely his badge, he clearly remembered stealing it two years before whilst in California.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
On the corner of Cathedral Road a raven sat in a tree watching him. He knew it was Dorkus for two reasons. Firstly, he'd told Dorkus to stay there to keep an eye on Michael. Secondly, he was wearing a top hat, carrying a cane, and if Corvid's eyes were right, he now had spats over his feet."Cacaw," Dorkus said."Really?" Corvid replied, "we're back to cawing?""I thought it would be less suspicious in public.""You do know you just said that carrying a cane and wearing a top hat and a pair of spats?
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
These werewolves and the gwrgi are not like the American breed of werewolf. They are not part timers. They do not spend the one, full moon, night in every twenty eight as a wolf or wolf-man beast. They do not spend twenty eight days and twenty seven nights wandering round high school hallways and shopping malls filled with teenage angst about falling in love with the 'one'. They do not go to cool parties where everyone is half naked and waxed.When werewolves change that's it, seven years as a wolf. Gwrgi are stuck the way they are permanently and aren't so much a wolf with a large dollop of teenage heart throb mixed in, but more a wolf with a little too much stinky tramp mixed in.One folk legend is true. You can kill both werewolves and gwrgi by either shooting them through the heart with a silver bullet or by chopping their head off. But then, pretty much any animal can be killed by shooting them through the heart with a silver bullet or by chopping their head off. And if you're on a budget, the bullet probably doesn't even need to be silver.
— Dylan Perry, Gods Just Want To Have Fun
Go forward in your beliefs and teachings, educate the open-minded and be humble to the ones who aren’t.
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
I wish we would all just fall apart so I wouldn't have to listen to the downfall happen, so slowly, so painfully.
— Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth
I looked at an angel today, but the angel could not see me. The angel was more amazing than beautiful, like the best forgotten dream.
— Delano Johnson, Words That Changed the World
Cadavers and spirits are human refuse, and they are absurdly difficult to dispose of properly. When someone dies, a small gang of specialists is required to remove and inter the body in such a way that it can always be located precisely at any time while preventing it from ever appearing again.
— Michael Cisco, The Traitor
When I’m gone, time won’t change. It will pass the way it always has. I’ve seen it happen. People always move on. You will find your mate. You will move on then I’ll be nothing but a memory, but I will never forget you. I will always love you for you have drawn emotions in me no other has in two thousand years. I will live with the memory of you in my heart because nothing can erase you from within me. You have forever changed me. You’ve taught me what it’s like to truly love.
— J.L. Sheppard, Heavenly Desire
I can’t let it happen. I can’t risk it. I have to protect you, and I will. With every breath in me, I will.
— J.L. Sheppard, Heavenly Desire
I survive on moments of make-believe happiness.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
And the more he gazed at her, the more he felt a twinge of something he couldn’t quite describe, an unknown surge that bubbled inside him from the first moment he’d caught sight of her, and it wouldn’t release him.
— J.L. Sheppard, Heavenly Desire
He would give up his wings and heaven for her, a woman he loved but would never truly belong to him, a woman he could never keep. He’d fall and be banished from the only home he’d ever known, but he could never give her up. He’d keep her, enjoy her and love her as long as he could.
— J.L. Sheppard, Heavenly Desire
Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reason is no more than fantasy put into shape. Is there anything in the world more fantastic than that which is the most rational? Is there anything more fantastic than the mathematical point, and the infinite line, and, in general, all mathematics and all physics? Is there a more fantastic fancy than what we call "justice" and the other thing that we call "happiness"?
— José Ortega y Gasset, An Interpretation of Universal History
I have found the more fantastic the setting, the more truthful the confessions.
— S. Usher Evans
The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them graciously, "and you do not know anything at all.
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I made the decision. I want you more than I want heaven, more than I want to be an angel. I love you more than who I was created to be.
— J.L. Sheppard, Heavenly Desire
He had to die someday too. He might do it on sheets with a six-hundred-plus thread count, but he'd die just the same. Death wouldn't forget about him.
— John Howard  Matthews, This Is Where It Gets Interesting
You might think of the barrier between fiction and reality as being a bit like a blood-brain barrier, which allows only some kinds of molecules to pass from the bloodstream into the brain. Emotions can easily pass from the fictional world into the real one, so that fiction can feel as if it were real. But BELIEFS are blocked. We KNOW the events have no bearing in the real world.
— Gregory C. Carlson, Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says about You
I am exploring the beautiful world.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The dragon turned on the children and unicorns, his mouth open. For a brief moment, they could see his eyes change from blue to a deep red, like coals in a fire. It was almost as if another, fiercer dragon looked at them through Zebedia’s eyes.
— Bronwen Webb, The Legend of Wild Horse Beach
Her voice was soft and numinous, as befitted any Aizian singer, yet it was not just bells and melody. There was something else in her tune, a strand of solemnity that no Aizian could possess, for it yearned for something far away, whereas Aizians needed only open their eyes to behold the greatest wonders. Yes, she was in Aizai now, but she hadn’t always been, and for how much longer was impossible to say.
— Mary-Jean Harris, Aizai the Forgotten
Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.
— Michael Cisco, The Traitor
The first thing you lose when you die is your motor skills.
— John Howard  Matthews, This Is Where It Gets Interesting
He takes my face in his hands and presses his lips against mine – a tender, beautiful kiss – the kiss I’ve waited for forever. He quickly pulls his shirt over his head and my breath catches in my throat at the sight of his muscular body and smooth skin. He pushes Ordinary gently to the bottom of the bunk and climbs in next to me. Wrapping his arms around me, he lays his head next to mine. At last, we sleep.' ...from Notes on a Rebellion
— Valentina Hepburn, Notes on a Rebellion
The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus: Classic Annotated and Illustrated 1818 'Uncensored' Edition
Love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
One evening, after a particularly terrible row, the prince smashed his princess over the head with an old wooden clock and she tumbled to the floor, dead.
— Brooke Warra
Although her heart had been dead for years, she clasped her hands over her breast to protect what rested underneath.
— Montgomery Mahaffey, Ella Bandita and the Wanderer
They stared into the distance as though they were being absorbed into an alternate space-time reality. Perhaps they were. But probably they already had been.
— Amy   Tanner, The Virgin of Hopeless Causes
No, I do not believe in fate, that some spirits of the heavens weave the laws of the world to make it so. That is dogma for the foolish, for the universe is quite able to deal with such matters herself, to use her natural laws to guide matter and the spirits. Even so, souls within the world can act to naturally shift the cause of events. Magister Brennark did say that ‘Nothing happens unless we make it so.’ I believe you have made it so, Wolfdon, and how foolish it would be for us to ignore an opportunity that you yourself established, whether you knew you were doing so or not.
— Mary-Jean Harris, Aizai the Forgotten
I'm human. Isn't it obvious?
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
If you really think about it, humans must look really strange to animals. We have more than one way of communicating, we're ashamed of our bodies as to where it's a law to wear fabrics, we destroy natural civilizations for artificial ones, and despite being of the same species, we always look past that aspect and question, judge, hurt and kill each other over what makes us different.
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
...sometimes when you are lost for direction, you are open to a new way of seeing.
— Lauren Lola, A Moment's Worth
Chaol," he said, looking over his shoulder. Dorian's eyes were frozen, his jaw clenched. "Treat her well.
— Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight
Ascente cha ores ri ve breazza.""Turn your ear to the wind," she interpreted. "Stand strong.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Kiss of Deception
Today was the day a thousand dreams would die and a single dream would be born.The wind knew. It was the first of June, but cold gusts bit at the hilltop citadelle as fiercely as deepest winter, shaking the windows with curses and winding through drafty halls with warning whispers. There was no escaping what was to come.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Kiss of Deception
Now that your speech impediment has been rectified, perhaps you might say something. It would be best if it were humorous. I enjoy a good jest.' 'You are dreadfully rude,' I said to him. He sighed. 'That wasn't the slightest bit funny.
— Danielle L. Jensen, Stolen Songbird
There aren't many berry bushes where I'm from.""And just where would that be?"His hand paused on a berry like it was a monumental decision whether to pluck it or not. He finally pulled and explained he was from a small town in the southernmost part of Morringhan. When I asked the name, he said it was very small and had no name...."A town with no name? Really? How very odd." I waited for him to scramble, and he didn't disappoint me."It's only a region. A few scattered dwellings at most. We're farmers there. Mostly farmers. And you? Where are you from?"...I took the berry still poised in his fingers and popped it in my mouth. Where was I from? I narrowed my eyes and smiled. "A small town in the northernmost part of Morrighan. Mostly farmers. Only a regions, really. A few scattered dwellings. At most. No name."He couldn't restrain a chuckle. "Then we come from opposite but similar worlds, don't we?
— Mary E. Pearson, The Kiss of Deception
Hmmm,' the King said, making a face. 'I'm not sure this is what we bargained for, boy. We expected the girl to be attractive.' If I hadn't been so terrified, I would have been insulted.
— Danielle L. Jensen, Stolen Songbird
Snow. I wondered what it felt like. Aunt Bernette said it could be both soft and hard, cold and hot. It stung and burned when the wind pelted it through the air, and it was a gentle cold feather when it drifted down in lazy circles from the sky. I couldn't imagine it being so many things, and I wondered if she had taken license with her story as Father always claimed. I couldn't stop thinking of it.Snow.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Kiss of Deception
I saw sadness when I looked at what was left of them. The demigods who had once controlled the heavens had been brought low, humbled to the point of death. I always imagined I heart their crumbled masterpieces singing an endless mourning dirge. I turned, looking at the wild grass shivering across the plateau. "I see only reminders that nothing lasts forever, not even greatness.""Some things last."I faced him. "Really? And just what would that be?""The things that matter.
— Mary E. Pearson, The Kiss of Deception
Pointed teeth would give one an appearance of ferocity," he said, tapping a straight white tooth. "Although that might require one to follow through with biting someone from time to time, and the thought is enough to make one feel ill. I don't even like my meat cooked rare.
— Danielle L. Jensen, Stolen Songbird
A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never read them, and people who make sure I know they don’t read that space-ship stuff. No, no, they read Literature—realism. Like The Help, or Fifty Shades of Grey.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
For every blissful moment you must an anguish meet.
— Billie-Jo Williams, The Book of Conflict
You are not one of Pentrigrel’s creations. This is not where you belong. He will not keep his word to you. He is concerned only with himself. You cannot condemn yourself to this over Lunette’s fate.
— T.A. Miles, Masque of Shadow
Knowledge is not obtained through being absorbed in a book, it comes when you brush aside fantasies and sensuality, switching from the unreal to the real.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
CHORONZON "I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, Gods, worlds... of everything. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?"MORPHEUS "I am hope.
— Neil Gaiman, Preludes & Nocturnes
And you will spend the rest of your life wondering if I have disciples to avenge me. Hire your tasters, Burbesh. Until the Master of the Sleeps comes for you, you’ll never know a taste of anything that has not touched another’s lips first. You’ll never sleep in a bed that has not been first tossed for vipers. You’ll never sit in a chair that has not been tested for poisoned barbs in its cushions. You shall never see a bath drawn for you that you will not at first fear is acid. And you’ll never have another dream where my face is not grinning at you from the shadows.” -- From "Morality for Alchemists and Thieves
— L. Joseph Shosty
He can talk!""Yes, I can speak any language you want, fly, and breath fire." Air Raid said proudly."Can you do anything else?" the boy asked.Air Raid thought for a moment then said, "I can sing.""No, he can't. And please don't ask him to prove it," Ally quickly said looking at the fawn haired girl pleadingly."I'll believe you this time," the fawn hair girl said. After being proven wrong several times already she didn't want to take any more chances.
— Jennifer Priester, Mortal Realm Witch: Realms Unite?
Always have a plan, but be prepared to change it at any given moment.
— K. Chrisbacher, The Last Innocent
There is more magic in our own world than in any world of fantasy.
— T.L. Rese
Star, pillows don't attack dogs," Sam said."Or anything else," Turtle added.
— Jennifer Priester, Mortal Realm Witch: Realms Unite?
Brea watched the other Jaren, the Jaren she wasn't sure she wanted to know, slip through the cracks of his face. He was like the changelings in that Dream Box game he was so invested in, Bladescape. Her own interested mask, the one she was supposed to wear, must have slanted a bit around the eyes because then the other Jaren, her Jaren, was back. She watched his dimples puddle in the black of his beard as his mind fumbled for something to say. And this impromptu self-modification, here at the monitoring station at the job where she'd made such a fool of herself, was the closest thing to love that Brea Morgen had ever known.
— Daniel Pike, The Wolf of Descarta
it’s the way he uses language—which is nothing like the way fantasists used language before him. There’s no sense of nostalgia. There’s no medieval floridness. There’s no fairy tale condescension to the child reader. It’s very straight, and very clean—there’s no Vaseline on the lens. You see everything clearly, not with sparkles or a flowery sense of wonderment, but with very specific physical details.
— Joe Fassler
Vincent knew he was dying. A horrendous fever overwhelmed him with intolerable pain throughout many sleepless hours. It came as a result of a malaria epidemic that erupted in his hometown during early nineteenth century Europe. The disease spread so fast, physicians had to ration their stocks of quinine only to use it on patients who weren’t declared “hopeless”. Vincent was one of the unlucky ones. Speculating his time on Earth may be short, he requested spiritual guidance, even if he wasn’t a faithful man, nor did he believe in forgiveness. He appealed to the Church as a “just in case” like many other petrified atheists.
— Don Luis Zavala, Oh My Holy Phone
Few living do.""Then, have I...I mean, am I-""Oh, no, child! You are still very much alive! Though I may say, not as Alive as you might be if you had died.
— R.W. Schmidt, The Lands Beyond the Moon
The Dream Box wasn't a place, but it was a destination. It wasn't life, but it was a way of life. Reese wasn't awake in the Meat Space the way he was in Cyber, where a billion liters of endorphins blasted through the biological wiring of his veins with every corner his mind turned, where every conscious or subconscious choice he made was infused with importance. Linked in, he could partake of the guiltless ecstasy that was up for grabs, even for people like him. Linked in as Balmus, he could even be his own hero.
— Daniel Pike, The Wolf of Descarta
Love is whole. Love cannot be divided from itself. Love knows all paths, where even gods and cats are blind.
— F.T. McKinstry, Water Dark
Wizard is as wizard does.
— F.T. McKinstry, Ascarion
We live in the most epic of fantasy worlds.
— T.L. Rese
If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.
— Shannon L. Alder
Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.
— Shannon L. Alder
Happy Endings are an illusion. Real life is filled with brief moments of fleeting happiness, but ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief.
— Oliver Gaspirtz
Look at me!" he would shout as he ran laughing through the halls of Storm's End. "Look at me, I'm a dragon," or "Look at me, I'm a wizard," or "Look at me, look at me, I'm the rain
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
I began to realize that I could go wherever and whenever I dreamed.
— Chess Desalls, Travel Glasses
Adventuring turned out to be boring. Zach thought back to all the fantasy books he'd read where a team of questers traveled overland, and realized a few things. First he'd pictured himself with a loyal steed that would have done most of the walking, so he hadn't anticipated the blister forming on his left heel or the tiny pebble that seemed to have worked its way under his sock, so that even when he stripped off his sneaker he couldn't find it.He hadn't thought about how hot the sun would be either. When he put together his bunch of provisions, he never thought about bringing sunblock. Aragorn never wore sunblock. Taran never wore sunblock. Percy never wore sunblock. But despite all that precedent for going without, he was pretty sure his nose would be lobster-red the next time he looked in the mirror.He was thirsty, too, something that happened a lot in books, but his dry throat bothered him more than it had ever seemed to bother any character.And, unlike in books where random brigands and monsters jumped out just when things got unbearably dull, there was nothing to fight except for the clouds of gnats, several of which Zach was pretty sure he'd accidentally swallowed.
— Holly Black, Doll Bones
He wondered fleetingly how many people who sat alone for hours as they scribbled their stories practiced talking about their work during their coffee breaks....
— Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm
A wounded animal yet bears teeth
— Billie-Jo Williams, The Book of Redemption