Fantasy Authors

"Cora was very good at ignoring people who told her to do foolish things."

"Quests were a lot like dogs, Cora thought. They were much more attractive when seen from a distance, and not barking in the middle of the night or pooping all over the house. She had been there for every terrible, wearying, bone-breaking moment of this quest, and it held no magic for her. She knew it too well."

"The Queen of Cakes pursed her lips. “You must be from Sumi’s world,” she said primly. “You’re just as obnoxious as she was. She’s quiet now. How did you make her that way?” “Well, she died, so that was a large part of it,” said Kade. “Dead people normally stay in their graves, out of the way of the rest of us.”"

"There are moments that change everything, and once things have been changed, they do not change back."

"Time is the alchemy that turns compassion into love."

"Parents lied to children when they thought it was necessary, or when they thought that it would somehow make things better. It only made sense that children should lie to parents in the same way."

"“Only one way to find out,” said Kade, and started walking. “Why do people always say that?” muttered Cora, trailing along at the rear of the group. There’s always more than one way to find something out. People only say there’s only one way when they want an excuse to do something incredibly stupid without getting called on it. There are lots of ways to find out, and some of them even involve not pissing off a man who goes by ‘the Lord of the Dead.’” “Yeah, but they wouldn’t be as much fun, now would they?”"

"“There might be spiders,” said Jacqueline. She wrinkled her nose, less out of actual distaste and more out of the knowledge that she was supposed to find spiders distasteful. She really found them rather endearing. They are sleek and clean and elegant, and when their webs got messed up, they ripped them down and started over again. People could learn a lot from spiders."

"Of course this was all real. She had had her share of wild and beautiful dreams, but never anything like this. And if she hadn’t dreamed it, it had to be real, and if it was real, of course they were still there. Real places didn’t go away just because you’d had a nap."

"Hope only got you hurt. Hope was her least favorite thing, of all things."

"You know, sometimes I almost forget how creepy you are, and then you go and say something like that."

"Then Angela turned on Kade, and said, “I meant what I said. It’s sick, how you pretend like you’re something you’re not.” “I was about to say the same thing to you,” said Christopher. “I mean, you always did a pretty good job of pretending to be a decent human being. You had me fooled.”"

"The first man—the Master—raised his goblet in a mocking toast. “To the future,” he said. “It’s on its way now, whether we’re prepared or not.”"

"Miss Hansard, who had been teaching for nearly twenty years, slumped against her desk and wondered when retirement had gone from a distant impossibility to something to be devoutly yearned for. They got younger every year. She was certain of that much, at least. They got younger, and harder to understand, every single year."

"Time resumed. Time had a way of doing that."

"Mysteries in books were the best kind. The real world was absolutely full of boring mysteries, questions that never got answered and lost things that never got found. That wasn’t allowed, in books. In books, mysteries were always interesting and exciting, packed with daring and danger, and in the end, the good guys found the clues and the bad guys got their comeuppance. Best of all, nothing was ever lost forever. If something mattered enough for the author to write it down, it would come back before the last page was turned. It would always come back."

"“Jack?” Kade took a cautious step forward. “Are you…?” “There are only a certain number of possible ways to end that question, and the answer to all of them is ‘no,’” said Jack."

"If your friends would stop wanting you around because you’re not exactly like them, they’re not very good friends."

"“Hope hurts. That’s what you need to learn, and fast, if you don’t want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won’t ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there’s nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying ’don’t use this word’ and ’don’t use that word,’ but she never bans the ones that are really bad. She never bans hope.”"

", , and and , and , we're calling your names."

"“Back where I come from, mothers and fathers live together most of the time. Unless they’re divorced.” “What’s ‘divorced’ mean?” “It means they were married and now they’re not anymore, so their kids get double Christmas.”"

"says, and I find I agree, You have to break rules if you want to break free."

"Her accusations had been met with reality, and they didn’t have anyplace else to go."

"You look like the kind of girl who might know stuff about lichen."

"“If they’re being locked, they’re being locked. We don’t have a key.” “Sometimes, you don’t need a key,” said Sumi. Her smile verged on feral. “Sometimes a crowbar is good enough.”"

"“I don’t believe in destiny.” “Destiny believes in you.” The fawn took a breath. “I really am sorry we had to hit you.” “I’m sorry too,” said Regan. “You understand this was for your own good.” “I understand you think this was for my own good.”"

"Destiny wasn’t real. Destiny was for people like Laurel, who could pin everything they had to an idea that the world was supposed to work in a certain way, and refuse to let it change."

"There would be time to grab something from the dining hall before she had to go to English class. The thought of having to analyze the poetry of Emily Dickinson without calories was enough to make her want to cry. Why adults constantly wanted to know what centuries-old poems meant was beyond her. Shouldn’t someone have found the right answer by now? Or at least an answer good enough to accept?"

"This wasn’t the first time Cora had met people who thought their ideas about how the world should be were the only right ones."

"We can’t make things that happened not have happened by wishing that they hadn’t."

"“Heroism is addictive. Maybe that’s why it sounds so much like ‘heroin.’”"

"“My name is Lord of the Forest,” said the stag. Regan nodded. Every stag she’d ever met had been named Lord of the Forest, even when there was another stag only a few feet away. Deer didn’t understand irony."

"The nameless girl stared at Cora. “You’re insane.” “Probably,” said Cora placidly. “Sticks and stones, as the sages say; sticks and stones. I know what I am and I’m happy this way, and saying something true shouldn’t be an insult, ever, because that’s not how words want to work.”"

"The academic life has become far more bureaucratic, and is increasingly dominated by people with the habits of bureaucrats. You have to either do the bureaucratic stuff on autopilot, and try to keep some section of your brain free for thinking, or find a place where there are friendly bureaucrats to shield you. I'd say this. Managerial programs work best where there is a clear and quantifiable outcome and an easy way of checking what the work-force is doing. Neither of these apply to teaching, or research. Really productive researchers are often staring at the wall, or going for walks -- and their product tends to turn up ten years later. Good teaching is not measured by the number of degrees you turn out, or even how highly the students rate you at the time. But unsophisticated management systems (and those are the ones we have) insist on counting something"

"“Why do they call them love-spells, anyway?” he added bitterly. “It isn’t love, you know.” “Maybe because some people can’t tell the difference.…Or if they suspect there’s a difference, they don’t want to know.”"

"The priests of Agon saw in wizardry what the priests of all the cults of the gods saw: a body of men and women who did not need to petition the deities for assistance, a challenge to their authority, and a living question about the way they said the world worked."

"“Where’d you learn to make coffee like this?…If wizardry ever quits paying, you really will be welcome in my father’s service.” “What do you mean, if wizardry ever quits paying?” Rhion demanded in mock indignation. “For one thing, as you may have noticed, wizardry doesn’t pay, and for another, making good coffee is wizardry.”"

"Now they had given their wills to Agon, and it was Agon who acted through them—they could spy upon their benefactors, they could betray their friends, they could torture the weak, prostitute themselves, beat a helpless old cripple to death in an alleyway, and remain, in their hearts, good people, kindly people, men and women worthy of regard, because it was, after all, the Veiled God who was acting, not them."

"Loving and hating were so close, two sides of a coin whose name was Need."

"“I brought coffee.” “Dinar of Prinagos has just won my unqualified support against the perfidious White Bragenmeres under any circumstances, at any time, in thought, word, deed, spell, and incantation.”"

"“I suppose the talisman you gave me will keep people from noticing a full-grown horse?” “I’m not sure,” he said, gladly accepting the offer of a straight line. “It might keep them from noticing half of it but then the rest would be awfully conspicuous.”"

"From what I understand only the priests of Agon claim to have seen the Great Evils, and then they pretty much seem to be whatever will fit Agon’s purposes at the time."

"But too many people had come to him and Jaldis over the years, asking for magic to fix their lives. He knew of no spell which could not be twisted out of its purpose by fate, no potion which would for better or for worse change a human soul’s inner essence. No sigil he’d made had ever altered the words that rose automatically to a person’s lips when they weren’t thinking. Yet people kept acting as if someday the laws of magic would spontaneously change and spells would do all these things."

"It is the philosophies of this great race that I propose to examine. It is interesting to wonder along what lines it might have developed later if its ancestral heritage had been less diffused and intermingled with other such different stocks as it found in India on arrival, or were forced by many invasions and conquests to accept later."

"And the Mahabharata and Ramayana may in consequence be said to be the Bibles of the people as well as their inexhaustible treasure-houses of story... A treasury of story indeed! I read almost daily in both, marveling at the vast fertility, the tropic splendor of romance unfolded in either, but still more at the nobil- ity of ideals set forth, the great passion for the Unseen, the Beautiful, and Entirely Desirable, both in man and woman, which has always been the soul of India."

"In this vast and little-known epic — a series of gorgeously colored romances of lovely queens and mighty kings, full of a fascination that only those who care for true romance can realize — lies embedded a pearl of whose beauty and luster the world is aware. It is known as the Lord’s Song — or the Song Celestial — and it represents one of the highest flights of the conditioned spirit to its unconditioned Source ever achieved. It is assigned to the fifth century B.C. though opinions as to dates vary."

"But while India fixed her eyes on the Ultimate she did not forget that objective science is the beginning of wisdom. There the foundations of mathematical and mechanical knowledge were well and truly laid by the Noble Race."

"India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West. Christianity when it came offering its spiritual philosophy of life imposed an iron dogma upon the European peoples. Those who could not accept this dogma, whatever it happened to be at the moment, paid so heavy a penalty that the legend of the Car of Juggernaut (Jagannath) is far truer of Europe than Asia.""

"There is a place uplifted nine thousand feet in purest air where one of the most ancient tracks in the world runs from India into Tibet."

"Whereas in India the soul was free from the beginning to choose what it would, ranging from the dry bread of atheism to the banquets offered by many-colored passionate gods and goddesses, each shadowing forth some different aspect of the One whom in the inmost chambers of her heart India has always adored. Therefore the spiritual outlook was universal. Each took unrebuked what he needed. The children were at home in the house of their father, while Europe crouched under the lash of a capricious Deity whose ways were beyond all understanding."