Fantasy Authors

"It isn't swords or brawn we need now," Nynaeve said, "but brains. Men usually think with the hairs on their chests." She touched her chest absently, as if feeling for something through her coat. "Most of them do."

"Perrin ran a hand through his hair. The more he found out about kings, the less he liked them."

"A pig painted gold is still a pig."

"An Aes Sedai never lies, but the truth she speaks, may not be the truth you think you hear."

"Take life as it comes. Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can."

"Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute."

"The leaf lives its appointed time, and does not struggle against the wind that carries it away. The leaf does no harm, and finally falls to nourish new leaves. So it should be with all men. And women."

"I will never shame you. I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile. No woman deserves the sure knowledge of widow's black as her brideprice, you least of all."

"When you have never known a thing except to dream, it becomes more than a talisman."

"The rose petal floats on water. The kingfisher flashes above the pond. Life and beauty swirl in the midst of death."

"The fact that the price must be paid is proof it is worth paying."

"The best lie is often one too ridiculous to be taken for a lie."

"Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are."

"You'll use it [Perrin's axe], boy, and as long as you hate using it, you would use it more wisely than most men would. Wait. If ever you don't hate it any longer, then will be the time to throw it as far as you can and run the other way."

"Think if you want to stay alive. Fear will kill you if you don't control it."

"What is already woven cannot be undone. It will not make the trees grow again for you to bring the building down on our heads."

"Weep for what is lost forever."

"In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes."

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."

"Once you decide to gut a fish, there’s no use waiting till it rots."

"A flapping tongue has killed more men than sudden storms ever did."

"When there are fish heads and blood in the water, you don’t need to see the silverpike to know they are there."

"Should and would build no bridges."

"Always plan for the worst, child; that way, all your surprises will be pleasant ones."

"You break your neck, and I’ll see it mended just so I can break it again."

"A shaping stone, to make us; a testing ground, to prove our worth; and a punishment for the sin."

"All men dream. But I know dreams for dreams. This is reality."

"A man who will not die to save a woman is no man."

"You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide."

"The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity."

"Childish raptures! said Lucifer, with scorn, his eyes flashing like lightning. "Are we indeed whimpering and craven children, or slaves? Can we be content with toys and little deliciousnesses? Are we not mind, as well as emotion? And is not the mind, of both angel and man, the noblest of possessions, and worth exercising. It is in our minds that we approach the closest of Him, Who is all Mind. Mind is the creator of all philosophy, all order, all beauty, all satisfaction, but emotion is the lowliest of the virtues, if it is a virtue at all. Mind has in it the capacity to know all things, or, at least, the minds of angels."

"The ancient traditions entertain the possibility of the eventual remorse of the spirit of Evil and its reconciliation with God. Who is to say? In the book of Job Lucifer always presents himself before the Lord as “one of the sons of God,” and implies that he is not God’s enemy but man’s, and that he is the prosecutor of man before God, the witness to his crimes, the denouncer who demands the extreme punishment of eternal death for the blasphemy of man’s existence. Man’s little imagination has presented him in horrific apparitions, some of them absurd and jejune, horned and hoofed, yet he was the greatest, most powerful and most resplendent of the archangels and is still an archangel. To denigrate him as a ridiculous figure, and ugly and paltry, is wrong, and does a disservice to God Who can create nothing ugly — only man can do that — and in the belittling of Lucifer there is a great danger. Evil is nothing to belittle, nor the anguish of Evil. Lucifer, as the Holy Bible states, is Prince of this World, and certainly he cannot be as hideous as the other self-proclaimed “princes” we have seen in this century, and in past centuries. And his power is only a little less than the power of the Almighty, and has its expression only in Man."

"There can be help. There's always God," said Amy. "I'm ashamed. I'd forgotten about Him.” She was quiet for a time. When she lifted her head she looked older and resolute. “Don’t blame yourself too much, Cousin Caroline,” she said. “That’s as bad as taking no blame at all. I’m not going to blame everything on Ames; I was a little fool myself. I was old enough to know that things aren’t simple."

"Antonius [i. e., C. Antonius Hybrida] heartily agreed with him [i. e., M. Tullius Cicero] that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible."

"From my early childhood Lucanus, or Luke, the great Apostle, has obsessed my mind. He was the only Apostle who was not a Jew. He never saw Christ. All that is written in his eloquent but restrained Gospel he acquired from hearsay, from witnesses, from the Mother of Christ, from disciples, and from the Apostles. His first visit to Israel took place almost a year after the Crucifixion. Yet he became one of the greatest of the Apostles. Like Saul of Tarsus, later to be known as Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, he believed that Our Lord came not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles, also. He had much in common with Paul, because Paul too had never seen the Christ. Each had had an individual revelation. These two men had difficulty with the original Apostles because the latter stubbornly believed for a considerable time that Our Lord was incarnated, and died, only for the salvation of the Jews, even after Pentecost. Why has St. Luke always obsessed me, and why have I always loved him from childhood? I do not know. I can only quote Friedrich Nietzsche on this matter: "One hears — one does not seek; one does not ask who gives — I have never had any choice about it.""

"It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you."

"Learning … should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail. So its surroundings should be as gracious as possible, to complement it."

"I am the only major best-selling novelist in the United States who is not tainted by "liberalism" and Communism, and who has never belonged to a Communist front. As a result, the press, which is mainly "liberal", has been furiously attacking me for years in their alleged "reviews."... In our bitterness, we are beginning to wonder what protection an antiCommunist has in the United States now, had we been Communists we'd have had the enthusiastic support of the press and would now be very wealthy, for, as liberal writers told me in New York, with contempt, that had we been "liberals" we'd not have had to pay any taxes, or only token payments."

"A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrusts both his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government."

"Several years ago, Taylor Caldwell invited the Duchess of Windsor for a luncheon with fifteen others. The Duchess's secretary phoned Miss Caldwell to ask what transportation was being used, and she replied, "her husband would drive over to pick up the Duchess". The secretary replied, "I'm sorry, Miss Caldwell, your husband is Jewish and the Duchess does not mix socially with Jews". Taylor Caldwell then exploded, "Tell the Duchess, I am Dutch Protestant and I don't mix socially with prostitutes.""

"Originally perceived as a feminist (after the gender of "Taylor Caldwell" became known) the Buffalo author provoked screams of distaff outrage with her repeated public proclamations that a woman's place "is in the kitchen and the bedroom." These sounds were promptly drowned, however, in the chorus of protest that attended publication of such works as Captains and the Kings, which purported to connect the French Revolution, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the New Deal and the Kennedy family assassinations as an ongoing "plot" hatched and moved forward by a consortium of bankers, industrialists and international financiers. Not all the reaction was hostile, of course: Taylor Caldwell became a policy board member of the extreme right wing Liberty Lobby and the darling of the John Birch Society, which honored her with a plaque as a great "American Patriot and Scholar.""

"Known for strong and sometimes controversial opinions, much like her characters, Miss Caldwell once said that she approved of Dumas's admonition to "Fight someone every day, but never fight unimportant people.""

"I was talking to a woman last night. I said, “I’m not like other people.” She started to giggle. Then I raised my voice and said evenly, “That’s one blessing God gave writers — they’re not like other people!”"

"I read the book of Job over and over. Poor Job. He was afflicted. According to the Bible, he was a just man. But Satan said, “You put your finger on him, and injure him, and he won’t be such a just, devout man.” So God said to Satan, “Do anything you want with him, but spare his life.” And so he was afflicted. His children deserted him — he lost everything. He was reduced to sackcloth and ashes. Even his wife said, “Curse God and die.” But he didn’t. But he did rebuke God. He said, “I’ve lived a devout life. Worshipped You. I was just to my fellow man. Accomplished all I could in Your name. Look what’s happened.” And God answered him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? Where were you when I created the galaxies and the universes? Answer as a man! Gird up your loins and answer as a man!” That’s the subject of my next book."

"To eliminate sex from a book is to eliminate the great creative force in the world. Out of the sexual instinct rises all the art, you know. … No eunuch ever wrote a book."

"I don’t like women. I never did. That’s why I don’t belong to women’s lib. Most of my relatives were male. Women are the inferior sex. There’s no doubt about it — women are the inferior sex, in every way. There’s never been any woman genius — never. With all the opportunity in the world — all the leisure in the world, all the shelter — if women had any genius, it would’ve come out. It never did. There’s been no woman Michelangelo, or Beethoven, or Mozart."

"You’ve got to look at life clearly. No rose-colored glasses. The human race is not very admirable. It was a big mistake of God’s . . . The more I see of people, the more bitter I become. I think I appeal to readers because there’s nothing false or hypocritical in what I write. And they recognize themselves, and recognize their fears. And they know what bastards they are."

"I don’t know how I’ve survived the onslaughts of the government. It almost makes me believe in the Deity. I’m a Catholic, but I’m a Catholic-atheist, because the tragedies in life have overwhelmed me."

"This world’s brought me very little joy, very little satisfaction. It’s brought me nothing but tragedy from the time I was born. I regret every day I live. The human situation is not as unique as you think it is. We’re all the same. We all get kicked in the pants, we all have our moments of elation — though not much happiness. Happiness is a child’s word. There may be short periods of contentment, but very short. Life is mostly disappointment, tragedy, loss and failure."

"Writing isn’t fun. It’s the hardest work in the world. The very, very hardest. I mean creative writing. If it’s reportorial, it’s a different thing. When you have to create a whole milieu, with characters and background, that’s a different thing entirely. … Oh, you start out all enthusiastic. But after two or three chapters it becomes plain drudgery. I worked about ten hours the other night just on correcting and rewriting, because what you write originally is just a shadow of what you had in mind."