Fantasy Authors

"The library was like a stone quarry where no rain had fallen in ten thousand years. Way off in that direction: silence. Way off in that direction: hush. It was the time between things finished and things begun. Nobody died here. Nobody was born. The library, and all its books, just were."

"Some laugh, some cry, some bang the world with fists, some run, but it all sums up the same: they make do. The world swarms with people, each one drowning, but each swimming a different stroke to the far shore."

"You know and I know, I am Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, on my way to Eternity with a dead flashlight and no candles."

"Oh, oh. Here he comes, Moses crossing a Black Sea of bile."

"But all the little inside-people sitting around in her head would rock back in their tiny rockers and cackle and say, “You ain’t foolin’ us none, Grandma.”"

"She knew a thing she should have known all along: that dead people are like wax memory—you take them in your mind, you shape and squeeze them, push a bump here, stretch one out there, pull the body tall, shape and reshape, handle, sculp and finish a man-memory until he’s all out of kilter."

"And though the debate may run another hundred thousand years: What is Love? perhaps we may find that love is the ability of someone to give us back to us. Maybe love is someone seeing and remembering, handing us back to ourselves just a trifle better than we had dared to hope or dream..."

"He knew that most machines are amoral, neither bad nor good. But by the way you built and shaped them you in turn shaped men, women, and children to be bad or good. A car, for instance, dead brute, unthinking, an unprogrammed bulk, is the greatest destroyer of souls in history. It makes boy-men greedy for power, destruction, and more destruction. It was never intended to do that. But that's how it turned out."

"I have hit forty, forty has hit me, like a locomotive."

"“Off the mount, Nolan,” said the priest, “and enough of the sermon. What’s your point?”"

"“You move against my ethics,” said the priest. “A drowning man clutches at anything,” said Nolan, “and ethics may drown with him if that’s what he grabs instead of a life belt.”"

"You’re a has-been that never was. And you’re going to stay that way, spoiled and narcissistic and small and mean and rotten."

"There’s too much chance for shock. And yet I must tell her the truth. A doctor gets nowhere by lying to his patient."

"I’d hate to have you running hell, the lost souls would never get fried!"

"“You really talk,” he said. “Compulsive,” I said.” “You’d make a lousy writer,” he said. “I never knew a writer yet who was a good talker.”"

"“You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?” “No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns."

"Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft."

"Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man’s attitude when he has power."

"“War!” The thought stood in Sim’s brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived. But why? Wasn’t life short enough without fighting and killing?"

"Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye."

"The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them."

"Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts."

"Good to evil seems evil."

"If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people."

"“‘For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.’”"

"And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you, Will, for my money."

"And the odd thing in Dad’s voice was the sound truth makes being said. The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy."

"God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other."

"They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe."

"Next year’s going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all."

"And then, quite suddenly, summer was over."

"Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple."

"The sun did not rise, it overflowed."

"I’ve alway known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It’s essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don’t know."

"I’m not afraid. When you live as long as I’ve lived, you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it."

"Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughtless is far more fascinating when you’re twenty."

"“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?” “I don’t know anything.” “The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.” “You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.” “It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?” They both laughed quietly."

"Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another."

"“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.”"

"Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft."

"Oh, God, children are children, old women are old women, and nothing in between. They can’t imagine a change they can’t see."

"Well, I can’t waste a morning arguing with ten-year olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly."

"The first thing you learn in life is you’re a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you’re the same fool."

"All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past."

"He stood very straight and thought of nothing, or at least thought of thinking nothing."

"Anna said, “Must they have a reason?” “No, not if they’re insane, no,” said Juliet. “In that case no reasons are necessary.”"

"“Oh,” said Brunilla, the cow-searcher. “A man with wings.” That was how she took it. She was startled, yes, but she had never been hurt in her life, so she wasn’t afraid of anyone, and it was a fancy thing to see a winged man and she was proud to meet him."

"“It will only take a minute,” said Uncle Einar’s sweet wife. “I refuse,” he said. “And that takes but a second.”"

"More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. Over one hundred, it’s too hot to move. Under ninety, cool enough to survive. But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork. The brain becomes a rat rushing around a red-hot maze. The least thing, a word, a look, a sound, the drop of a hair and—irritable murder."

"“Don’t these people ever get lonely?” “They’re used to it this way.” “Don’t they get afraid, then?” ”They have a religion for that.” “I wish I had a religion.” “The minute you get a religion you stop thinking,” he said. “Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”"