Fantasy Authors

"“You must think us fools,” he said, leading me back into the gathering, “to waste ourselves in commemorating an era which never really existed.”"

"I glanced at him. He was wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and that consolidated my anger. Why is it, I ask you, that every measly little wimp in the universe thinks he can put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and instantly acquire magical hipness and cool, rather than—as is the case—looking like an asshole with reflecting eyes?"

"In mine, while there was also agony, it was essentially a love affair with revolution, with the idea of revolution. And as with all great passions, what was most alluring was not the object of passion but the new depth of my own feelings. Thus I was blind to the realities underlying it."

"We uncovered new forces, we took a step along what may be an endless path toward divinity, we redirected the entire thrust of psychoanalytic theory, and, as with all knowledge, we found that deeper and more compelling mysteries yet lay beyond those we had reduced to the security of fact."

"“These movies, they make war seem like a mystical opportunity. Well, man, when I was here it wasn’t quite that way, y’know. It was leeches, fungus, the shits. It was searchin’ in the weeds for your buddy’s arm. It was lookin’ into the snaky eyes of some whore you were bangin’ and feelin’ weird shit crawl along your spine and expectin’ her head to do a Linda Blair three-sixty spin.” I slipped into a chair and leaned closer to Witcover. “It was Mordor, man. Stephen King land. Horror. And now, now I look around at all these movies and monuments and crap, and it makes me wanna fuckin’ puke to see what a noble hell it’s turnin’ out to be!”"

"He could tell by the quality of her silence that she did not believe him, but if there was an advantage to being emperor, it was that she could not call him a liar to his face."

"“It is the nature of all persons to hold on to power when they have it,” Shulivar said. “Thus it stagnates and becomes clouded, poisonous. Radical action is necessary to free it.”"

"“We have thought you were too rule-abiding to be a good ruler—a paradox, you see—but perhaps we were wrong.” “But you're the Witness for the Judiciate!” Maia protested, which made everyone laugh. "We said rule, not law,” Pashavar said tartly. “There is a difference, Serenity. An emperor who breaks laws is a mad dog and a danger, but an emperor who will never break a rule is nearly as bad, for he will never be able to recognize when a law must be changed.”"

"“It is not foolish,” Dachensol Polchina agreed. “It is new, which is not the same thing.”"

"They took silence for assent, as the zealous often do."

"“It will cause a great many changes.” “Yes, but one cannot prevent change simply by wishing it not to happen.”"

"His mother had been the world to him, and although she had done her best to prepare him, he had been too young to fully understand what death meant—until she was gone, and the great, raw, gaping hole in his heart could not be filled or patched or mended. He looked for her everywhere, even after he had been shown her body—looked and looked and she could not be found."

"The oaths were no more than a formal deterrent to troublemaking, but they were better than no deterrent at all."

"He did not entirely believe himself, but he knew he had best pretend he did."

"When power is gone the memory of power lingers."

"I suppose being right will have to compensate me for being poor—the story of my life, I fear."

"Music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of mind."

"A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once...We can never truly know the path we have not walked."

"We’ll fall off that bridge when we cross it."

"Ned found that if he thought about things like that too much, the accident of it all, his mind started down unsettling paths.… Could you make a pattern out of any of this? Stitch together the seeming randomness into something that had meaning? Is that what life was about, he wondered: trying to make that pattern, to have things make sense?"

"“Sometimes the blind to do with the blind.” “Yeah,” said Ned. “Straight over cliffs.”"

"“But why would they attack us? What have you been doing here, Ned?” “Why would who attack us?” “Wolves.” “What? No way. Wolves are mostly vegetarian. I learned that in school last year.” “Then tell these to go find the salad bar,” said Aunt Kim, grimly."

"Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross."

"In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone."

"Sunrise, the first gift in the world. Promise and healing after the hard transit of night. After a darkness beset with beasts—imagined and real—and inner fears, and untamed, violent men. After sightlessness that could lead one astray into ditch or bog or over a cliff, or into the clutch and sway of whatever spirits might be a broad, bent on malice. Morning’s pale light had offered an end to such fears for centuries, millennia, whatever dangers might come with the day. Shutters were banged open, curtains drawn, shop doors and windows were unlocked, city gates unbarred, swung wide, as men and women made their way out into the offered day. On the other hand (in life there was almost always another hand), daylight meant that intimacy, privacy, escape from the unwanted gaze, silence for meditation, the solace of unseen tears on a pillow—or of secret love on that same pillow before, or after—were so much harder to claim. Rarer coinage, in the clear light."

"But knowledge, however you got it, changed things, Ned Marriner thought. You couldn’t go back to not knowing, even if you wanted to."

"There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk."

"He didn’t think he would understand the strangeness of life if he lived to be a hundred years old."

"“The Tyrants have cleaned out most of the highway brigands. Just a matter of protecting their own interests. They want to make sure no one else robs us before they do with their border tariffs and taxes.” He spat, discreetly, into the dust of the road. “Personally I preferred the brigands. There were ways of dealing with them.”"

"Home was a dream she’d had yesterday. A place where children used to play. Among towers near the mountains, by a river, on curving sweeps of white or golden sand beside a palace at the edge of the sea."

"Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm."

"It was true, it was all true. But none of it was the truth."

"His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for."

"One of the advantages of having languages as a hobby is that it can take you quite a while to run out of swear words."

"The ability to know another’s mind does not preclude the likelihood of misunderstanding it."

"Blood is blood, you know? There’s too much shared history and too many cross-connecting bonds to ever totally extract yourself from that half-smothering, half-supporting, muddled net called family."

"And stop thinking you’re the superior ones! You’re just another drop in our gene pool! We’re all descended from peoples who thought they were kings and gods and who found themselves to be almost nothing at all in the end. Don’t let that be you."

"It was a common characteristic among the warriors—no fear of death, and only pride for their scars, but little thought of all that could happen in between those two extremes."

"Let me tell you, I have seen men who are trying to find themselves, and I have seen men who are trying to lose themselves, but rare indeed is the man who knows exactly who he is and where he is at."

"I don’t want easy. I want true."

"Getting information out of them was like extracting gold from ore—a lot of labour and time, and why bother to do it when you know there’s a store just around the corner?"

"Besides, for poets it wasn’t lying, it was art."

"Women fell into that category of fantasies and dreams that worked well when unfulfilled but presented all kinds of problems when brought out into the real world of trial and failure."

"Paama sat up slowly, moving as cautiously as if facing a lion who had just declared his intention not to pounce, but to have a friendly chat instead."

"That was the nature of chaos; its effects spanned time in ways that were not always immediately discernible, not even by beings outside of time."

"“Ever wonder if you’ve done the right thing?” I asked him finally. “Frequently,” he replied. “Legalities notwithstanding, to not wonder indicates a dangerous lack of awareness of the nearly infinite array of choices presented by life.”"

"Ansige unreeled the tale of his tribulations, thoroughly ransacking the truth and then dipping into the bag of embellishment and sprinkling with a free hand."

"Chaos was a far subtler force than most people realised. It would be so easy to sense if it threw off thunderbolts or sent barely sensed thrummings through the fabric of reality, but it was nothing more than the possible made probable. It did not break or bend any laws of nature or tip the balance of the universe."

"“Never?” he said, dismayed. “Never,” she reiterated firmly. He nodded, pretending to be resigned, but secretly he thought that there were always ways to get around “never.”"

"His mother had been the daughter of a minor chief, and she had carefully instilled in Ansige an understanding of the importance of importance."