Fantasy Authors

"That was the second major lie I told that week. It gets easier, in some ways; now I lie without expending any effort. But I think each one has its own weight. One alone may barely register, like a grain of sand in the palm of one’s hand. But soon enough there’s more than can be held and they start to slip through our grasp if we’re not careful. I’m always careful."

"I think “majority” is one of my least favorite words. It’s so often used to justify bad decisions."

"Saying it’s a sign from God is an interpretation, not a fact."

"These are intelligent, rational people and they just absorb all this shit without even thinking about it. Are they so desperate to hold on to something that they’ll ignore the facts? How long can they do that?"

"There may be only a thousand or so people here, but it’s easy enough to make the pressure of conformity irresistible. Hell, sometimes we only need one other person to make us fall into line."

"The fire in my veins burns hotter than any sun."

"Fear is a prison, and only by facing it can we truly be free."

"I love books . I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas . I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud."

"We all have the power to embrace our scars and rise like phoenixes from the ashes of our pain."

"Mortality smelled muddy and wet and I reeked of it."

"Just because something is not alive, does not mean that it is dead. You have to be alive first to be dead."

"When I am not moving toward my fate, it comes to me."

"To know someone's pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it."

"I speak my life into existence with each expressed breath I take. I tell you a story within which are more stories. Universes within universes. We are all spinning like small suns. I am like my own sun."

"Strength comes not from avoiding suffering, but from enduring it with grace and resilience."

"People hate what they don’t understand."

"“Are you willing to allow other the same right to their beliefs?” “If their beliefs don’t hurt others and, when I feel the need, I am allowed to call them stupid in my mind, then yes.”"

"Withholding the truth is lying."

"“Is it better to give or receive?” “They’re the same,” I said. “One can’t exist without the other. But if you keep giving without receiving, you’re a fool.”"

"We fear what we don’t know."

"“Maybe I'm too scared to fly, but I'm brave enough to save your life.”"

"“Is it not the worst pain to know there is a cure for your child's illness and then not be able to obtain it? Oh it must be the one of the worst types of pain in the world.”"

"“A curious mind must be properly fed”"

"“Silence is the best answer to a fool.”"

"“Funny how all things people don’t understand seem to be ‘cursed’.”"

"“Some of our old ways are better forgotten, but not all of them.”"

"There is nothing that a man must believe that can’t be seen or touched or sensed."

"The greatest adventure lies not in our surroundings, but in the depths of our own souls."

"Our bodies may be fragile, but our spirits are unbreakable"

"True beauty lies in embracing our flaws and imperfections."

"When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other."

"I dislike the whole business of experiments on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason in a particular case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they're being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there's no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done in this case or that is morally justifiable. These experimental animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they're able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights, and no choice in the matter."

"Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly, he finds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the world reappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier who was waiting, with a heavy heart, to suffer and die in battle. But suddenly the luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone bursts out singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland were crouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they fly pell-mell up the hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will."

"Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?"

"When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks."

"The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as we think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight.Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it.We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again."

"There's terrible evil in the world. It comes from men. All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals."

"To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature."

"Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back."

"People treat it with more respect than they treat any police officer. Maybe because the robot is polite, helpful and never asks for bribes."

"Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass."

"so much has changed there because of the work of Octavia Butler, because of the work of Nnedi Okorafor, because of the work of Tananarive Due."

"For too long, the voices and visions for our future have been provided, for the most part, by and from a culturally European (if not Eurocentric) perspective. However, there is change afoot. The works of Octavia E. Butler are becoming mainstream, and names like Nnedi Okorafor and Lesley Nneka Arimah are bringing much needed flavor to the narratives that help shape our future."

"I’ve never heard the term “numerical synesthesia,” but now that I have, yes, this is how she often sees. This is how she is able to calm herself. This is her path to tapping into the energy of spirit. I’ve also blended it with a phenomenon that I became familiar with while playing sports. “Treeing” was when you were effortlessly performing at a level beyond yourself. It was like looking into time and space and being able to manipulate it, but if you tried to analyze it, you’d fall out of it…"

"I believe aliens have definitely been here. I don’t think the theory that they have affected, interacted with, exchanged with the people of Earth (human and otherwise) in the past takes away from the accomplishments or innovations of anyone. I think the general belief that certain peoples are less than other peoples is what does that…"

"Nnedi's work is imaginative and rich."

"“The problem with you,” Force said, “is that you’re so used to pain and discomfort that your definition of feeling okay is not the greatest indicator of being okay.”"

"Animals don't behave like men. If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."

"The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…"

"I don’t think about what I write and the way I write as “containers”, nor do I think about what others will see it as. I just write it. I know that I am deeply interested in post-humanism and how our pasts connect with our futures and present. I’m interested in African and Arab cultures and how they both battle and blend and I’m coming at this not as a researcher, but as a participant. I’m interested in technology and spirituality and how they blend and what happens when they blend. I think that my interests and the results of them in my stories lead to very “weird” fiction…"