Fantasy Authors

"Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these: "Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman. "Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer."

"I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home. The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me to tell her."

"My mother's favourite paraphrase is one known in our house as David's because it was the last he learned to repeat. It was also the last thing she read — Art thou afraid his power shall fail When comes thy evil day? And can an all-creating arm Grow weary or decay? I heard her voice gain strength as she read it, I saw her timid face take courage, but when came my evil day, then at the dawning, alas for me, I was afraid."

"We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it."

"If the young leddy was so careless o' insulting other folks' ancestors, it proves she has nane o' her ain; for them that has china plates themsel's is the maist careful no to break the china plates of others."

"Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to Love and sees him looking for her, and knows she must shrink from the arms she would lie in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a love that is always bitter. It grows sweet with age."

"Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility."

"The gladness of living was in your step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what love might be. You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds are free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to dazzle the eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken by you into his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be young."

"How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown."

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."

""They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever. It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard."

"The tragedy of a man who has found himself out."

"There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make."

"Oh, it's — it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none."

"His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall."

"I'm not young enough to know everything."

"I do loathe explanations."

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."

"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success."

"Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own."

"The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them."

"No problem, kaja" Lara nodded with exaggerated obeisance. "You may lead, so long as we may follow."

"Victor Cachat's father: Son, you'll know you're in love when a woman's voice settles into your spine."

"W.E.B. Du Havel: God, I love the "fine morality" of the wealthy and powerful. You'll spill tears over your own, in a heartbeat. And then never even look twice at people below you, whose very lives are ground under every day, day after day, year after year."

"Narration: The reason for his anguish, the intolerable burden which had broken him at last, was the simplest thing in the world: he loved his wife. He always had, and he always would. Nothing could change that, but that was what had made his agony bite so deep, the reason he couldn't forgive himself for not somehow making things "all right" again... and the reason he'd had to turn to someone else to rebuild himself when the collapse came. It had been cowardly of him, in many ways, but he simply could not have made himself dump his weakness, his collapse on her shoulders while she coped with everything God had already done to her."

"Randy Steilman: Oh, Christ! We're all gonna die. You seen the kinds'a casualty lists she comes up with?"

"Narration: No one else knew how she'd longed for extinction, how much part of her had hungered simply to quit. To end. She'd once intended, coldly and logically, to do just that... She'd sacrificed her naval career... and a corner of her mind suspected she'd actually wanted to sacrifice it - that she'd planned to use the loss of the vocation she loved so much as one more reason to end her dreary existence. It had seemed only reasonable then; now the memory was one more coal of contempt for her own weakness, her willingness to surrender to her own pain when she'd always refused to surrender to anyone else."

"Narration: Perhaps his love for her made him less than impartial, but he also knew how deeply she'd been hurt and chided her for judging herself so much more harshly than she would have judged someone else..."

"Narration: He bit his lip and realized how right the Protector had been to stop him from offering her a commission months ago. Not because she couldn't do the job, but because she was afraid she couldn't. Because she would have refused it, and that refusal would have ended her career forever. Inability, real or imagined, could never truly be overcome once an officer accepted deep inside that he could no longer hack it. That damage was almost always permanent, for it was self-inflicted and no one else could heal it for him."

"Narration: [Michelle] Henke sensed [Honor's] terrifying aptitude for destruction as never before. Henke had feared for her sanity; now she knew the truth was almost worse than that. Honor wasn't insane - she simply didn't care. She'd lost not only her sense of balance but any desire to regain it."

"Admiral Amos Parnell: (before launching the Manticoran-Havenite War) I suppose I ought to think up some dramatic, quotable phrase for Public Information and the history books, but I'm damned if any of them come to mind. Besides, admitting the truth wouldn't sound too good (...) The truth, Russell, is that now the moment's here, I'm scared shitless. Somehow I don't think even Public Information could turn that into good copy."

"Narration: But the universe wasn't really unfair, she thought, and her mouth quirked. It just didn't give much of a damn one way or the other."

"Honor Harrington: The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do. (paraphrase on Mark Twain)"

"Narration: But what kept them on their feet when there was no sane reason for hope were the bonds between them, loyalty to one another, the knowledge that others depended on them even as they depended on those others. And sometimes, all too rarely, it came down to a single person it was simply unthinkable to fail. Someone they knew would never quit on them, never leave them in the lurch."

"Do you promise you won't hurt me?" asked Arthur. "You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock," replied the Old One. "You are mortal enough that I would not slay you like a wandering cockroach, or a Denizen of the House." "Thanks," said Arthur. "I think."

"If you like what you are writing, just write. Try to keep going before you stop to take a break. Keep going back before too much time has passed. And just stay with it."

"Teachers are very undervalued for what they do."

"Oh, to be a minion," muttered Giac to himself dreamily. "I was a sub-minion."

""Come on, then, Giac," said Suzy. "Last one to the top is a rotten sorceror." She started off at a run, but paused after a few steps when Giac didn't immediately follow. He was looking puzzled. "Come on!" "But I already am a rotten sorceror," he said."

""You mean he's dead too?" asked Suzy. "Yes," said Dusk. "This morning, in his cell. The guards outside were also slain, and only Sir Thursday's boots remained." "Sounds more like he escaped," Suzy said. "His feet were still in the boots," said Dusk."

"I don't... I don't care," he said softly to his reflection. "I have a job to do. It doesn't matter what I have become. It doesn't matter what I look like."

""Thank you for splitting. I guess we'd all better get on with it." "Indeed," said Dame Quarto. "We had," added Dame Septum. She raised her hand and dramatically announced, "I shall attend to the Middle House!" "And I to the mountains!" declared Dame Quarto, and both strode from the room. "And I to... sorting our Superior Saturday," said Arthur. Somehow it didn't sound the same."

"General Turquoise Blue?" asked Arthur. "I didn't make Suzy a general, did I? I remember her talking about it, but I don't remember actually..." "She probably just put on the uniform," said Dr Scamandros. "No one would question her."

"They could have attacked us straight away. And Fred wanted to be one, so they can't be all bad." "I wanted to be a Nithling with three heads once, so that's no guarantee," whispered Suzy as she lay down and raised her arms and feet. "What's more, after a washing between the ears I thought it was possible."

""You're really, truly not going to kill everyone?" asked Marek. "No!" shouted Arthur. "Why do you keep asking? Do I look like some kind of crazy murderer?" "No..." Marek sounded as if he did still think that but didn't want to upset Arthur."

""Am I correct in assuming that I address Lord Arthur?" "Yes, I'm Arthur." Emelena mumbled something that Arthur correctly thought was about expecting him to be taller, more impressive, have lightning bolts coming out of his eyes, and so on."

""No!" shouted Arthur. "What's wrong with you? They're people! You can't just kill hundreds or thousands of Piper's children because the Piper might... just might... make some of them do something!" "Can't we?" asked Dame Primus. She sounded genuinely puzzled."

"You are a weak reed, Recruit Green!" Helve shouted. "Weak reeds make for badly woven baskets! This platoon will not be a badly woven basket!"

"All of us recruits are equal in the eyes of the Army: low as you can go."

"Lieutenant Crosshaw says you are a special case!" bellowed Helve. "I do not like special cases! Special cases do not make good soldiers! Special cases do not help other recruits become good soldiers! Therefore, you will not be a special case! You understand me!" "I think so-" "Shut up! That was not a question!"