Fantasy Authors

"The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue."

"Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode: Before you were, or any hearts to beat, Weary and kind one lingered by His seat; He made the world to be a grassy road Before her wandering feet."

"We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face."

"Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna's children died."

"When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

"The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry."

"A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love: The folk who are buying and selling, The clouds on their journey above, The cold wet winds ever blowing, And the shadowy hazel grove Where mouse-grey waters are flowing, Threaten the head that I love."

"I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core."

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;"

"Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still A little space for the rose-breath to fill! Lest I no more hear common things that crave; The weak worm hiding down in its small cave, The field-mouse running by me in the grass, And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass; But seek alone to hear the strange things said By God to the bright hearts of those long dead, And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know. Come near; I would, before my time to go, Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways: Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days."

"Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate, I find under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way."

"Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;"

"Dream, dream, for this is also sooth."

"Words alone are certain good."

"The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head."

"Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears."

"The Babylonian starlight brought A fabulous, formless darkness in; Odour of blood when Christ was slain Made all platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline."

"Man can embody truth but he cannot know it."

"Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought."

"The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste."

"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."

"This country will not always be an uncomfortable place for a country gentleman to live in, and it is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am afraid that Labour disagrees with me in that. On this matter I am a crusted Tory. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure.""

"I agree about Shaw — he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor."

"One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep: "Hammer your thoughts into unity." For days I could think of nothing else, and for years I tested all I did by that sentence."

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

"Do what you will. I do not understand stops. I write my work so completely for the ear that I feel helpless when I have to measure pauses by stops & commas."

"In dreams begins responsibility."

"The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake."

"The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth."

"We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet."

"The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet."

"You are still wrecked among heathen dreams."

"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words."

"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, — that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality.... The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."

"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all — the colleges I mean — like an opera."

"This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air."

"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."

"Why do I have this imagination? It's the only one I've got!"

"Where are the Velvets?"

"Get me Neil on the line. No, I can't hold. Have him read 'Snow, Glass, Apples' where nothing is what it seems."

"Seems I keep getting this story twisted so, where's Neil when you need him?"

"But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?"

"If you need me, me and Neil will be hanging out with the Dream King. Neil says 'hi', by the way..."

"I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into."

"Julia Hobsbawm OBE was a 22-year-old book publicist when in 1986 she was with Gaiman, then 25, at her studio flat in Chalk Farm, London. Hobsbawm said: "I literally have no memory of how he came to be back there. What I'm totally certain about is that romance was not on the cards, not for me. And I did not believe it was on the cards for him." In what Hobsbawm said was "an aggressive, unwanted pass", Gaiman "jumped" on her "out of the blue", forced his tongue into her mouth, and pushed her onto her sofa, before she wriggled free. Hobsbawm said she then cut off contact with Gaiman. She says she now wished she had called Gaiman out back then as she is plagued by the incident to this day and worries that she enabled his alleged misconduct to continue."

"I really like Neil a whole, whole, whole lot, and I really do not want to marry Kevin Smith, even a little. Do you remember the Trojan War, dude? I'm just saying. Can you imagine what a world war between a Neil Gaiman army and a Kevin Smith army would actually look like? Their fans are serious. I predict there would be lots of very high-fallutin', toilet-based name-calling, confusing many. And possibly foam swords swinging at hockey sticks. Actually, that's bullshit. There's no way anybody would leave their Twitter feeds for long enough to pull out a foam sword or a hockey stick. Maybe it'll be the world's first full-on digital war and people will just head over to Second Life to duke it out. I hope Neil's army wins."

"Nothing will remain of the armies of the living and of the dead, of the dreams of the gods and the bravery of their warriors, nothing but ash. Soon after, the swollen ocean will swallow the ashes as it washes across all the land, and everything living will be forgotten under the sunless sky. That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods."

"It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. You have failed."

"On the battlefield called Vigrid, the gods will fall in battle with the frost giants, and the frost giants will fall in battle with the gods.The undead troops from Hel will litter the ground in their final deaths, and the noble Einherjar will lie beside them on the frozen ground, all of the them dead for the last time, beneath the lifeless misty sky, never to rise again, never to wake and fight."

"Even the gods cannot change destiny."