Fantasy Quote of the Week

A book. It must be a wonderful thing to have written a book.
--Christopher Columbus in Les Daniels' The Black Castle

Fantasy Quote of the Week

How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it.
--Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

Fantasy Quote of the Week

I didn’t know if it was any good or not, but that didn’t matter. I had written something new and fresh I hadn’t written before, and it felt wonderful.
--Neil Gaiman, “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

There is nothing more frightening or exciting than a blank piece of paper. Frightening because you’re on your own, leaving dark tracks across that snowy plain, and exciting because no one knows your destination but yourself, and even you can’t say exactly where you’ll end up.
--Robert McCammon, Boy’s Life

Fantasy Quote of the Week

For the Dream-Master had set up His own picture, and full-length and in the most gorgeous colors, in His window. Choking and spluttering I saluted it, and then, still filled with laughter, I crossed the street once more and went inside, where I knew I would find Him. A man awaited me there -- not the one I sought, but one who understood Whom it was I had come for, and knew as well as I that His capture was beyond any thief-taker’s power. I knelt, and there, though not to the satisfaction I suppose of Baron H_______, Fräulein A_______, Herr R______, and the Count and Countess von V________, I destroyed the Dream-Master as He has been sacrificed so often, devouring His white, wheaten flesh that we might all possess life without end.
--Gene Wolfe, “The Detective of Dreams”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

Not all heroes live to have songs made for them, and those that do must sometimes hear their lives made into lies.
--Esther Friesner, Harlot’s Ruse

Fantasy Quote of the Week

Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like, Miss Millick? Just picture it. A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlaying and yet blending with the other, like a pile of semitransparent masks?
--Mr. Wran in Fritz Leiber's “Smoke Ghost”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

“If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment,” Murphy interrupted, “I will break your arm in eleven pieces.”
--Jim Butcher, Changes

Fantasy Quote of the Week

“Even the gods could not prevent it,” he said. “You have brought this ill upon yourselves, by your own doing. Remember that, when bright Hope turns to dust in your hands.”

“Nay,” said they, “for another traveler approaches now, and he wears a mighty purse upon him. We shall retire on this day’s takings.”

“Fools!” said the youth, and he turned on winged heels and vanished up the path, greeting Hercules as he passed him by.
--Roger Zelazny, “But Not the Herald”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

“Go on,” it said in my own voice. “Marry the girl. You’re not a True Spirit either. And it’s best to have someone in your arms when Hell surrounds you.”
--William Mark Simmons, The Woman of His Dreams

Fantasy Quote of the Week

Big corporations aren’t always the bad guys; but it’s the sensible way to bet.
--John Taylor in Simon R. Green's Paths Not Taken

Fantasy Quote of the Week

I got enough to worry about without getting into who sleeps with who.
--Stu Redman in Stephen King's The Stand

Fantasy Quote of the Week

When God wanted a city leveled, or all the first-born slaughtered in one night, he sent an angel. They were Heaven’s stormtroopers.
--Simon R. Green, Drinking Midnight Wine

Fantasy Quote of the Week

What can be imagined can be done.
--Celeste in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire

Fantasy Quote of the Week

I am cursed to live between worlds. On the one side there is normalcy. On the other, there is a place where I can be what I am with no fear of reprisals, where I can commit murder itself and scarcely raise the eyebrows of those around me, where I am even encouraged to do so to protect the sanctity of that world. But I left and I can’t return. I won’t return.
--Kelley Armstrong, Bitten

Fantasy Quote of the Week

There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world.
--Neil Gaiman, “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire”

Fantasy Quotes of the Week

Kelley Armstrong, Bitten
David Barbour and Richard Raleigh, Shadows Bend: A Novel of the Fantastic and Unspeakable
Ray Bradbury, The October Country
John Brunner, “Imprint of Chaos”
Jim Butcher, Changes
Viola Carr, The Diabolical Miss Hyde
Les Daniels, The Black Castle
Esther Friesner, “Auntie Elspeth's Halloween Story or the Gourd, the Bad, and the Ugly”
Esther Friesner, Harlot's Ruse
Esther Friesner, “The Wedding of Wylda Serene”
Neil Gaiman, “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves of the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire”
Neil Gaiman, “The Goldfish Pond and Other Stories”
Simon R. Green, Drinking Midnight Wine
Simon R. Green, Drinking Midnight Wine
Simon R. Green, Paths Not Taken
Charlaine Harris, Deadlocked
Stephen King, The Stand
Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost”
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Festival”
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Robert McCammon, Boy's Life
Geoff Nicholson, “Making Monsters”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Ulalume”
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
William Mark Simmons, The Woman of His Dreams
Karl Edward Wagner, “Sing a Last Song of Valdese”
F. Paul Wilson, Nightworld
Gene Wolfe, “The Detective of Dreams”
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, The Godforsaken
Roger Zelazny, “But Not the Herald”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

You know, in my day when we asked for a Halloween story we wanted to be scared spitless. And we all dressed up like ghosts and ghouls and goblins because we wanted to scare all the other kids so bad they’d walk home with their shoes squishing. At least tell me that hasn’t changed.
--Esther Friesner, “Auntie Elspeth’s Halloween Story or the Gourd, The Bad, and the Ugly”

Fantasy Quote of the Week

Naturally I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being -- forgive me -- rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.
--Dumbledore in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Fantasy Quote of the Week

The name matters little if the nature does not change.
--The Traveler in Black in John Brunner's “Imprint of Chaos”