Fantasy Authors

"Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage."

"I hate & detest love stories, but it seems that you must have their grinning sentimental skeletons to hang your respectable humanity and drapery upon. (in a letter to her editor Richard Watson Gilder in summer, 1881)"

"Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!"

"People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."

"God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms."

""I see . . ." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. [first line]"

"I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things."

"For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. … In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

"In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live."

"Three thousand dollars would certainly have bought a house in Knoxville...I want my chestnuts off a higher bough. (in a letter to her sister Edith in April, 1876)"

"Being alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic."

"Then something began pushing things up out of the soil and making things out of nothing. One day things weren’t there and another they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific. I keep saying to myself, ’What is it? What is it?’ It’s something. It can’t be nothing!"

"“She’s got a way with her, has Susan,” she went on quite volubly. “I’ve been thinking all morning of one thing she said yesterday. She says, ’Once when I was givin’ th’ children a bit of a preach after they’d been fightin’ I ses to ’em all, “When I was at school my jography told as th’ world was shaped like a orange an’ I found out before I was ten that th’ whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not enow quarters to go round. But don’t you—none o’ you—think as you own th’ whole orange or you’ll find out you’re mistaken, an’ you won’t find it out without hard knocks.” What children learns from children,’ she says, ’is that there’s no sense in grabbin’ at th’ whole orange—peel an’ all. If you do you’ll likely not get even th’ pips, an’ them’s too bitter to eat.’”"

"Eh! poor lad! He’s been spoiled till salt won’t save him. Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way—or always to have it. She doesn’t know which is th’ worst."

"“You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin. “What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Any one is selfish who doesn’t do what they want.”"

"Mary’s lips pinched themselves together. She was no more used to considering other people than Colin was and she saw no reason why an ill-tempered boy should interfere with the thing she liked best. She knew nothing about the pitifulness of people who had been ill and nervous and who did not know that they could control their tempers and need not make other people ill and nervous, too. When she had had a headache in India she had done her best to see that everybody else also had a headache or something quite as bad. And she felt she was quite right; but of course now she felt that Colin was quite wrong."

"Ben Weatherstaff says he is so conceited he would rather have stones thrown at him than not be noticed."

"“Do you think he wants him to die?” whispered Mary. “No, but he wishes he’d never been born. Mother she says that’s th’ worst thing on earth for a child. Them as is not wanted scarce ever thrives.”"

"“Oh, Dickon! Dickon!” she cried out. “How could you get here so early! How could you! The sun has only just got up!” He got up himself, laughing and glowing, and tousled; his eyes like a bit of the sky. “Eh!” he said. “I was up long before him. How could I have stayed abed! Th’ world’s all fair begun again this mornin’, it has. An’ it’s workin’ an’ hummin’ an’ scratchin’ an’ pipin’ an’ nest-buildin’ an’ breathin’ out scents, till you’ve got to be out on it ’stead o’ lyin’ on your back. When th’ sun did jump up, th’ moor went mad for joy, an’ I was in the midst of th’ heather, an’ I run like mad myself, shoutin’ an’ singin’. An’ I come straight here. I couldn’t have stayed away. Why, th’ garden was lyin’ here waitin’!”"

"“The rain is as contrary as I ever was,” she said. “It came because it knew I did not want it.”"

"Some very fine day/ I will step up your way,/ At least, if so you agree./ With two tales I've been writing, full of murders and fighting --/So I hope you'll be glad to seem me. (in a letter to her cousin in March, 1863)"

"“Eh!” he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it, “there doesn’t seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there’s flowers an’ such like, an’ such lots o’ friendly wild things runnin’ about makin’ homes for themselves, or buildin’ nests an’ singin’ an’ whistlin’, does there?”"

"“How many things she knows, doesn’t she?” “Eh!” said Martha. “It’s like she says: ’A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children’s as good as ’rithmetic to set you findin’ out things.’”"

"Yorkshire’s th’ sunniest place on earth when it is sunny."

"At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one. She was getting on."

"In India she had always felt hot and too languid to care much about anything. The fact was that the fresh wind from the moor had begun to blow the cobwebs out of her young brain and to waken her up a little."

"So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment."

"“Eh!” she said, “but you are like an old woman. Don’t you care?” “It doesn’t matter,” said Mary, “whether I care or not.” “You are right enough there,” said Mrs. Medlock. “It doesn’t.”"

"Perhaps if her mother had carried her pretty face and her pretty manners oftener into the nursery Mary might have learned some pretty ways too."

"[T]o be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people."

"If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."

"I know who and what I am. I am The Executioner, and I don't date Vampires. I kill them."

"After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby."

"A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful."

"Love is too precious to be ashamed of."

"You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."

"That feeling of terrible emptiness when I touched him was like going into a house that you thought would be full of people you loved, only to find it empty, and even the furniture taken. You walk from room to room, hearing your footsteps echo on the naked floors. Your voice bounces back from the empty walls, where the lines of beloved photos still show like the line around a body at a crime scene. He was gone."

"Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people, that's easy. […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God?"

"The idea of the feudal system is that the people on the top take care of the needs of those on the bottom, but I have seldom seen it work that way," Wicked said. "Yeah," I said, "it's like trickle-down economics; it only works if the people at the top are really good, decent people. The system is only as good as the people in power."

"Samuel smiled at me. "Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren't they?" I nodded, and frowned. "They're important to everybody." He laughed. "Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions.""

"[Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant.] Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet. Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one. Ronnie: You're pro-choice. Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life. Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both. Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb."

"Well I wasn't going to die. You didn't die of a broken heart, it just felt like you were going to. I knew from personal experience that if you just kept moving, acting as if you weren't bleeding inside you didn't die, and eventually you stopped wanting to."

"I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid..."

"There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality."

"Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil."

"There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it."

"A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were."

"Anita: My life works for me right now, but it wouldn't work for a child. Ronnie: Why, because you don't have a husband? Anita: No, because people try to kill me on a semiregular basis."

"No, really, Ronnie, it's good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged."

"You ask yourself "What is love? Am I in love?", when what you should be asking is, "What is not love?", ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?"