Fantasy Authors

"In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, the Devil comes to Moscow. What follows is a fearful spiral of denunciation, disappearance and death, at once arbitrary and spiteful, calculated and yet deranged. No work better captures the loathsome quality of the Terror; no scene gets closer to illuminating the surreal atmosphere of the show trials than Nikanor Bosoy's nightmare of being exposed as a foreign currency dealer while sitting in the audience of a variety show in a Moscow theatre. For not every act in the drama required Stalin's instigation; his role was to create an environment in which ordinary men and women - even members of the same family - would denounce one another; in which today's torturer could be tomorrow's victim; in which today's camp commandant could spend the night in the punishment cells."

"How sad, ye gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps. You will know it when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; it's mists, it's swamps and it's rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you."

"Gods, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart knowing that death alone . . ."

"They have read your novel . . . and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So I wanted to show you your hero. He has been sitting here for about two thousand years, sleeping, but, when the moon is full, he is tormented, as you see, by insomnia. And it torments not only him, but his faithful guardian, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it. The only thing that brave creature ever feared was thunderstorms. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one who is loved."

"'You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev."

"Only if some microorganism doesn't attack these tender hothouse plants and eat away at their roots, only if they don't rot! And that can happen with pineapples! Oh, yes, indeed it can!"

"Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!'"

"The procurator studied the new arrival with avid, and slightly fearful eyes. It was the kind of look one gives someone one has heard of and thought a lot about, and whom one is meeting for the first time."

"It was clear to him that he had lost something irretrievably that day, and that now he wanted to make up for the loss with minor, inconsequential, and most importantly, belated measures."

"'For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.'"

"'I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don't exist. But you do believe that it is really I?'"

"'Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They'll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves.'"

"'Unfortunately I cannot show it to you,' replied the master, 'because I burned it in my stove.I'm sorry but I don't believe you,' said Woland. 'You can't have done. Manuscripts don't burn.'"

"No documents, no person."

"Manuscripts don't burn."

"'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that "proof" of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: "If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad."' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast...to Kant?"

"'Don't be afraid, Queen … don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already growing.'"

"The hope that she might regain her happiness made her fearless."

"'Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked . . .'"

"Follow me reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out!"

"We have no idea whether there were any other strange occurences in Moscow that night, and we have no intention of trying to find out, since the time has come for us to proceed to Part Two of this true narrative. Follow me, reader!"

"`Second freshness - that's what is nonsense! There is only one freshness - the first - and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.'"

"'What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?'"

"'What is all this? Damn me if I don't have you thrown out of here!' The beast just smiled and said: 'Damn you, I think you said? Very well!'"

"The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost."

"There was something uncommonly fake and uncertain in every line of these articles, depite their threatening and self-assured tone. I kept thinking . . . that the authors of these articles weren't saying what they wanted to say, and that that was why they were so furious."

"[S]aid the not entirely suppressed old Ivan, rearing his head from inside the new one, although without much confidence."

"‘He's clever,' thought Ivan,' I must admit there are some smart people even among the intelligentsia'"

"Да, человек смертен, но это было бы ещё полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чём фокус!"

"Foreign visitors . . . how impressed you all are with foreign visitors! But they come in many different varieties."

"Ryukhin showed himself no mercy-'I don't believe in anything I've ever written!'"

"Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it."

"It's all over, so let's not burden the telegraph system."

"'I do not know these good men,' replied the prisoner."

"'Oh, no, you don't look like a halfwit,' the procurator replied quietly and smiled some strange smile."

"In fact, I'm beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly."

"I promise not to hammer a stake through your heart or set you on fire, as long as you promise not to rip my throat out. Okay? We in the twenty-first century have this marvelous technical innovation; it’s called civilization, and it means we don’t have to make promises like that to everyone we meet because we can usually take it for granted."

"Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced."

"I’ve known all along I’m not qualified for this—it’s not really imposter syndrome if you really are a fake."

"We’re enveloped by a cortege of motorcycle outriders and blacked-out SUVs so ostentatious that Her Majesty would die of embarrassment if they tried it on her back home. We are so visible I have to fight the urge to crouch down in my seat—but then I realize here in DC your importance is telegraphed by the size of the gridlock in your wake."

"American cops are so heavily militarized these days that the only way I can tell the difference between them and the army is the color of their body armor—that, and the army is less trigger-happy."

"I’m not a politician, even though I play-act one when the boss tells me to—I’m allowed to change my mind when my understanding of the facts changes."

"Anxiety loves company almost as much as misery."

"“Yes-yes!” Jon bounces up and down on the balls of her feet. “How much coffee did we have this morning?” Pete asks, suspicion dawning. “All of it!” Brains absorbs this fact slowly. The room he and Pete shared didn’t come with a filter machine, but there was an industrial-sized one in the motel lobby. If Jon drank the entire jug— “How many times did you refill it?” asks Pete. “Only three times! It kept running out!” Brains glances at the vicar. “Are we going to need a tranquilizer dart?” he murmurs."

"His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. “You have imposter syndrome,” He says, “but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It’s the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they’re on top of the job because they don’t understand it.”"

"History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves. So the historicity of journals like this one—their accuracy and authenticity—is a function of the reliability of the narrator."

"Contingency time is useless wasted time, right until you need it."

"He’s had a lot of practice helping families suffering from experiences that are simultaneously mundane and far more horrifying than anything in a movie: deaths from cancer and dementia, the loss of babies and young children, that sort of thing."

"The Republic of Mhari contains five thousand times more cells than there are humans on earth, but is somehow both more and less than the sum of her parts. If all those cells die, then I am, by definition, dead. But the relationship between cell-citizens and the Republic of Me is less obvious than you might think. At any point in time some of my cells are dying and being replaced, and the me that exist today consists almost entirely of different cells from the me of a couple of years ago—although I’m still me. But if you were to separate all my cells and then keep them alive in a mad scientist’s test-tube collection, I’d be dead, though all my bits live on. The Republic of Self can be dissolved, or taken over in a coup, or drastically reformed. I harbor this illusion of unitary identity—but in reality I’m what biologists call a superorganism, a swarm, and ensemble entity. I am not me: I am Hobbes’s Leviathan, or Leviathan’s Representative."

"I’ve never been so frightened for somebody in my life: I felt totally powerless. You can’t punch extradimensional parasites out of your boyfriend’s brain."