Novelists From The United States

"In the face of real danger Elak forgot the gods and drew his rapier. Prayers, he had found, would not halt a dagger's blow or a strangler's hands."

"We need not go back through the cavern of the monsters," she said. "There is a way to reach the unseen road from here."

"The fire that had come from beyond the stars was harnessed. Tamed — chained — by the flesh to which it had once, long ago, given life...."

"“Counsel will continue,” said the judge, wishing he were Jeffreys so he could send the whole damned bunch to the scaffold. Jurisprudence should be founded on justice, and not be a three-dimensional chess game. But, of course, it was the natural development of the complicated political and economic factors of modern civilization."

"A casual eye might have seen nothing extraordinary in Wade as he moved lithely across the meadow toward the Thunderbug. He was tall, lean and rangy, looking rather like a college boy on a vacation, with his brown, almost youthful face and tousled dark hair, so deep-black that it was almost blue. A closer inspection would have shown more significant details. There was an iron hardness underlying Wade’s face, like iron beneath velvet. His jet eyes were decidedly not those of a boy. There was a curious quality of soft depth to them, although sometimes that black deep could freeze over with deadly purpose."

"We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil. It builds and does not destroy. So I shall go on in my search for a race where I can find kinship and happiness."

"When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build."

"All these things were slipping away from him, in a clear, cold wisdom that came from beyond the stars. He envisioned man as a bit of animate clay moving fro a little while upon a ball of mud and stone and water that drifted through the void, through the darkness that would finally engulf it."

"Catherine Leigh Moore shattered the masculine barriers of fantasy and science fiction when she started publishing her remarkable short stories in Weird Tales in the 1930s. Her character Jirel, the ruler of the fiefdom of Joiry in medieval France, was the first female Sword-and-Sorcery hero. And, considering how much competition she faces today from the warrior women who have followed the path she blazed, she remains one of the best."

"When you’re young you never doubt yourself. You never wonder if you’re justified. But as a man gets older he learns to doubt. Whether he can do a thing—whether he should."

"There’s no such thing as a theatrical troupe without conflicts."

"Only fools offend me, woman, and they but once."

"She turned her face up to the strange stars and wondered in what direction her course lay. The sky looked blankly down upon her with its myriad meaningless eyes."

"And not until then did she remember how fatal it is said to be to accept a gift from a demon. Buy, or earn it, but never accept the gift."

"She half expected, despite her brave words, to come out upon the storied and familiar red-hot pave of hell, and this pleasant, starlit land surprised her and made her wary. The things that built the tunnel could not have been human. She had no right to expect men here. She was a little stunned by finding open sky so far underground, though she was intelligent enough to realize that however she had come, she was not underground now. No cavity in the earth could contain this starry sky."

"All about her, as suddenly as the awakening from a dream, the nothingness had opened out into undreamed-of distances. She stood high on a hilltop under a sky spangled with strange stars. Below she caught glimpses of misty plains and valleys with mountain peaks rising far away. And at her feet a ravening circle of small, slavering, blind things leaped with clashing teeth."

"It was a long way down. Before she had gone very far the curious dizziness she had known before came over her again, a dizziness not entirely induced by the spirals she whirled around, but a deeper, atomic unsteadiness as if not only she but also the substances around her were shifting. There was something queer about the angles of those curves. She was no scholar in geometry or aught else, but she felt intuitively that the bend and slant of the way she went were somehow outside any other angles or bends she had ever known. They led into the unknown and the dark, but it seemed to her obscurely that they led into deeper darkness and mystery than the merely physical, as if, though she could not put it clearly even into thoughts, the peculiar and exact lines of the tunnel had been carefully angled to lead through poly-dimensional space as well as through the underground—perhaps through time, too."

"Now she took the sword back into her hand and knelt on the rim of the invisible blackness below. She had gone this path once before and once only, and never thought to find any necessity in life strong enough to drive her down again. The way was the strangest she had ever known. There was, she thought, no such passage in all the world save here. It had not been built for human feet to travel. It had not been built for feet at all. It was a narrow, polished shaft that cork-screwed round and round. A snake might have slipped in it and gone shooting down, round and round in dizzy circles—but no snake on earth was big enough to fill that shaft. No human travelers had worn the sides of the spiral so smooth, and she did not care to speculate on what creatures had polished it so, through what ages of passage."

"The stone walls were incised with those inevitable, mysterious symbols which have become nothing more than queer designs now, though a million years ago they bore deep significance."

"Beauty is as tangible as blood, in a way. It is a separate, distinct force that inhabits the bodies of men and women. You must have noticed the vacuity that accompanies perfect beauty in so many women...the force so strong that it drives out all other forces and lives vampirishly at the expense of intelligence and goodness and conscience and all else."

"Death in your eyes, Earthman. Nothing in your mind but murder. Can that brain of yours comprehend nothing but battle? Is there no curiosity there? Have you no wonder of why I brought you here? Death awaits you, yes. But a not unpleasant death, and it awaits all, in one form or another. Listen, let me tell you—I have reason for desiring to break through that animal shell of self-defense that seals in your mind. Let me look deeper—if there are depths. Your death will be—useful, and in a way, pleasant. Otherwise—well, the black beasts hunger. And flesh must feed them, as a sweeter drink feeds me...Listen."

"She was unbinding her turban... He watched, not breathing, a presentiment of something horrible stirring in his brain, inexplicably...The red folds loosened, and—he knew then that he had not dreamed—again a scarlet lock swung down against her cheek...a hair, was it? A lock of hair?... thick as a thick worm it fell, plumply, against that smooth cheek...more scarlet than blood and thick as a crawling worm...and like a worm it crawled."

"Nothing I have ever written was given the slightest deliberation. It was there in the typewriter and it came out, a total bypassing of the brain."

"A pitcher of mignonette, In a tenement's highest casement: Queer sort of flower-pot—yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement— The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's highest casement."

"Ah woe is me, through all my days Wisdom and wealth I both have got, And fame and name and great men’s praise; But Love, ah! Love I have it not."

"What, know you not […] That love must kiss that Mortal’s eyes Who hopes to see fair Arcady? No gold can buy you entrance there; But beggared Love may go all bare— No wisdom won with weariness; But Love goes in with Folly’s dress— No fame that wit could ever win; But only Love may lead Love in To Arcady, to Arcady."

"What does he plant who plants a tree? He plants the friend of sun and sky; He plants the flag of breezes free; The shaft of beauty, towering high; He plants a home to heaven anigh For song and mother-croon of bird In hushed and happy twilight heard— The treble of heaven's harmony— These things he plants who plants a tree."

"Shake was a dramatist of note; He lived by writing things to quote."

"Aspirations pure and high — Strength to do and to endure — Heir of all the Ages, I — Lo! I am no longer poor!"

"Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm For eyes grown weary of the garish day! Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray, Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm."

"O golden Silence, bid our souls be still, And on the foolish fretting of our care Lay thy soft touch of healing unaware!"

"What dost thou bring to me, O fair To-day, That comest o'er the mountains with swift feet?"

"Achmed: She's a Singer; she may be prescient. Grunthor:"She certainly is, cute lit'le thing. Oi like 'er."

"Grunthor: It's enough just to know that you fell for me."

"Grunthor: Well, 'allo, Duchess! Oi was 'opin you'd drop in! Care for a spot o' tea?"

"Rhapsody: You know, you both really ought to have more respect for music. It can be a very powerful weapon, as well as whatever else you need it to be." Grunthor: That's true; my singin' voice can be quite good at inflictin' pain. At least that's what the troops use ta tell me."

"Grunthor: Well, sir, if we can't find work when we get out o' this stinkin' 'ole, maybe 'Er Ladyship 'ere will teach us some tunes and we can go on the road as a team of wanderin' troubadours. Oi can see it now: Doctor Uchmed's Travelin' Snake Show.""

"Achmed: How noble are you feeling, Grunthor? Grunthor: "Oi'm always noble, sir; it's in my blood. 'As been ever since Oi ate that knight a few years back."

"Rhapsody father: "Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to."

"Rhapsody’s father: The water won't hurt you, it's the panic that will. Stay calm."

"Rhapsody:"I’m Lirin-" Grunthor:"'Ey, don't remind me. Oi ain't eaten recently.""

"Stop that immediately," he ordered harshly. "I forbid you to do that. If you want to come with us, you had best understand that you are never to do that again. Weeping and wailing is banned from here on out. Now decide. Come if you want to – if you can refrain from that noise."

"Young Rhapsody: What did you put in the water this time? Rhapsody's mother: Sit all the way down. Lavender, lemon verbena, rose hips, snow fern- Young Rhapsody: Snow fern? We eat that! Rhapsody's mother: "Exactly. Why do you think the water is so warm? I'm not bathing you, I'm making soup."

"Between shallow breaths she began to mutter a string of inspired curses more vile than either of the men remembered hearing, much to Grunthor's delight."

"Rhapsody: "I can sit watch. I have a dagger." Achmed: "Well, I for one will sleep much better now knowing you're protecting us, Rhapsody. Try not to hurt any small animals that might attack unless they're edible.""

"Achmed: This is Grunthor. No one has concealed that. Grunthor: Although you can always call me 'The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Cost.' My troops always does."

"Rhapsody: It's just that, well, in my limited experience, Firbolg are thought of as monsters. Grunthor: And in my not-so-limited experience, Lirin are thought of as appetizers."

"Grunthor replaced his helmet and turned to Rhapsody. He took one look at the expression on her face and roared with laughter. "'Allo, darlin'. Oi'm so glad to see it's love at first sight for you, too. Come along." He walked away into the night."

"Achmed Come with us if you want to live."

"Barney:He's become a lot more dangerous of late. And he has a lot more ears than he used to. Rhapsody:Oh dear. And he wasn’t all that attractive to begin with."