Fantasy Authors

"I see people who write characters who are loonies and make them convincing and believable, and I envy them tremendously. I don’t really understand them. It’s funny, because I’ve created my own monster. In the ‘Great War’ and ‘American Empire’ books, I’m writing the person who is the functional equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I’m inside his head — and that’s a very strange place for somebody who thinks of himself as a fairly rational fellow to be. That’s alarming."

"Many things are possible. Few things are certain."

"My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit."

"(Another story inspired by a previous story was "Pico Rico Mandorico," the story of two sisters who escape the power of a devil figure. Wasn't that influenced by Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"?) Yes, in fact my story is a prose rendition of the poem. I said so in the introduction to Sonatinas, the book in Spanish…I liked it so much I said, "I want to do my own version of this"... Writing is a lot like sewing: You bring pieces together and make a quilt. What brought me to Rossetti's story was a dirge, a little ditty called "Pico Rico Mandorico/Quién te dio tamaño pico?" ["Pico Rico, far and wide/leaves a mark where others hide"]. In this nursery rhyme there is a man dressed in black who comes to the house of a little girl. It's always on Sundays-that's very important. He has a very long nose and he spills everything on the table, so they have to cut off his nose. The man is really a devil, and he wants to steal the little girl and take her away with him. The Christina Rossetti story reminded me of the nursery rhyme, and I made a quilt of both."

"Oh Lord, make thy law, I entreat thee, our delight."

"Silence more musical than any song."

"One day in the country Is worth a month in town."

"All earth’s full rivers can not fill The sea that drinking thirsteth still."

"Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth, Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth, Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white, Love is like a lovely rose, the world’s delight. Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth, But the rose with all its thorns excels them both."

"Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, Sleeping at last."

"Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads The wind is passing by."

"In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago."

"Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time."

"For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands."

"Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad."

"Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land."

"When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget."

"The birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me."

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend."

"A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity."

"Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools."

"The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see. Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny. Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it."

"The world is only as deep as we can see. This is why fools think themselves profound. This is why terror is the passion of revelation."

"To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife."

"I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness."

"Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human."

"Every monumental work of the State is measured by cubits. Every cubit is measured by the length of the Aspect-Emperor’s arm. And the Aspect-Emperor’s arm, they say, stands beyond measure. But I say the Aspect-Emperor’s arm is measured by the length of a cubit, and that all cubits are measured by the works of the State. Not even the All stands beyond measure, for it is more than what lies within it, and “more” is a kind of measure. Even the God has His cubits."

"If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?"

"If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything."

"Give me an arm long enough, and I will reach across the universe and punch myself in the back of the head. Not because I deserve it, but because I can take it."

"Consciousness is something hooked across the top of your nose, like glasses, only as thick as the cosmos."

"To believe in meaning of any sort is to have faith in some version of ‘God.’ Finite or infinite, mortal or immortal, the intentional form is conserved–and as I hope to show, that form is supernatural."

"The difference between the critic and the apologist in philosophy is the difference between conceiving philosophy as refuge, a post hoc means to rationalize and so recuperate what we cherish or require, and conceiving philosophy as exposure, an ad hoc means to mutate thought and so see our way through what we think we cherish or require. ... To truly expose thought is to be willing to let it die… Or become inhuman."

"Our ‘epoch of thinking’ teeters upon the abyssal, a future so radical as to make epic fantasy of everything we are presently inclined to label ‘human.’ Whether it acknowledges as much or not, all thought huddles in the shadow of the posthuman–the shadow of its end... It has been, for better or worse, the thematic impetus behind every novel I have written and every paper I have presented."

"Why break hearts or blow minds when you can rot souls?"

"... science, being science, can only wage total war. No traditional discourse has survived the scientific rationalization of their domain. All of them have been reduced to hokum, expelled from the courts, hounded from policy, from rationality altogether, and relegated to fantasy, which is to say, become commodities sold to balm the superstitious soul."

"I write about the death of magic. All of it."

"Johnston's picture of intentionally rising from the cracks and gaps of an intrinsically contradictory reality happens to be the very ontological trope I use to structure the fantasy world of The Second Apocalypse! The ontological formula he hopes will force change on science is the same ontological formula I use to identify my fiction as fantasy fiction. One of my goals in my epic fantasy series is to demonstrate the seamless nature of the fit between Continental philosophical concepts and magical realities, to explore the affinities one finds in theological and new age appropriations of Continental conceptualities. To show the degree to which humanistic discourse belongs to prescientific cultural ecologies, and so examine the inevitability of its obsolescence."

"It is no accident that fantasy is preoccupied with our pre-Enlightenment, pre-crisis past. The contemporary world is a nihilistic world, where all signs point to the illusory status of love, beauty, goodness and so on. ... Fantasy is the celebration of what we no longer are: individuals certain of our meaningfulness in a meaningful world. The wish-fulfillment that distinguishes fantasy from other genres is not to be the all-conquering hero, but to live in a meaningful world."

"I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying."

"Palpable gods. Real magic. A certain, objective moral order. Apocalyptic retribution. The primary difference is that fantasy worlds have dispensed with the belief that comes part and parcel with scriptural worlds. Fantasy allows us to lose ourselves in anthropomorphic worlds without the burden of belief. In this sense, they're scriptural worlds that openly acknowledge themselves as fantastic - which is to say honest scriptural worlds."

"In part, The Prince of Nothing is about the dialogue between these two species of faith, the one that identifies itself with doubt and remains open to the superunknown, the other that identifies itself with certainty and remains blind to the superunknown. It shows how empowered, how manipulable, and how dangerous we become when we think we possess an absolute yardstick."

"The world is a big place and our brain is only three pounds."

"And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget. That's horror."

"We have more televangelists per square mile here in this part of the country than I really care to think about. Maybe somebody out there will figure out how to spray for them."

"‘Fight if you wish. Deny what is before you if it comforts you. But nothing you do can change your fate.’"

"‘I am not ready. But when will we ever be ready?’"

"Change is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful."

"War was a catalog of madness."

"Better to die than to live in fear."