Fantasy Authors

"I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is this sinful?"

"It is my craft and my science to Watch. It is yours to jeer. Each of us to our specialty."

"Political theorists tend to swallow their theories when forced back on pragmatic measures of survival."

"When you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim!"

"His name would fade from the front pages in a few days; he knew too much about communications media to believe that his current notoriety would last."

"Dinoli had to clawed himself to first rank in public relations by sheer exertion, coupled with judicious backstabbing."

"I enjoyed the late 1960s as much as anyone, and I regarded much of the political ferment of the time as vital to the survival of our society—the Vietnam war might have gone on for many decades more without it. But the era did have its silly side, and the search for the immediately relevant at the expense of the less immediately practical side was, to me, one of the sillier aspects of it. Throwing most of past human knowledge overboard for the sake of bringing about instant social reform did not strike me as an effective way of achieving anything but ignorance. Evidently it seemed that way to others, too: after a while the traditional sciences and historical subjects returned to the curriculum, Shakespeare and Sophocles were allowed back in also, and not a great deal was heard from the earnest, deadly young decreers of non-negotiable demands who had had such power over academic life for a time. (Although a lot of them grew up and became university professors, and they are behind the modern craze for political correctness that has spread so much terror through our academic institutions.)"

"Autobiography. Apparently one should not name the names of those one has been to bed with, or give explicit figures on the amount of money one has earned, those being the two data most eagerly sought by readers; all the rest is legitimate to reveal."

"Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been."

"I’m not responsible for my weird ancestors. Quite the reverse. Exactly the inverse."

"I got the same sort of feeling reading her works as I had gotten from classic Heinlein: a renewed faith in humanity and a desire to explore and do good in the universe. Great feeling."

"The apparently effortless fluidity of both style and story may actually have mitigated against critical notice, in comparison to notorious stylists like William Gibson, or, again, Ursula Le Guin. But, despite Bujold's space opera plots, the flashes of humour rare either in Le Guin or in SF as a whole, and the steady pigeonholing of her work as military SF, her similarities to Le Guin go far beyond the presence of that wall. Firstly, both are consummate character-builders. Indeed, characterization, emphasis on character, and plots that depend on character and the novums of technology are among Bujold's strongpoints. Nowhere does this emerge more clearly than if her work is taken as military SF and compared to that of writers like Jerry Pournelle or David Weber."

"Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary."

"It's an interesting problem, though, for writers of popular series. Should one throw one's protagonist over the Reichenbach Falls, or let him fade gently into the sunset of the Sussex Downs, keeping bees? (Or both?) No matter which the writer chooses, someone will be unhappy about it. If one's audience is large enough, it will collectively demand every possible closure, most mutually exclusive."

"The writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea."

"Lots of us SF-types like the idea of traveling to the Future (although, having now done so once myself -- the hard way -- I’m less sure), but why do we imagine the Future would want us? Oh, a few 21st-century Icemen, perhaps, as historical curiosities, but in our hundreds of millions? It would be like the greatest wave of immigration ever, but from the past into other people’s Now. It might seem to them like sacrificing resources needed for their children to their great-great-great-grandparents. Counter-evolutionary, among other things."

"I don’t write stories to tell readers what to think, or even tell them what I think; I write stories to show me what I think. Writing is always a journey of discovery that way, as suspenseful for me as I hope it will be for the audience."

"Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them."

"Don't worry about that depressing old dictum "Write what you know". If you need to know something, look it up. Learn how to find out what you need to know to make it right. Be passionate, be picky, have enough self-criticism to demand of yourself your best and not sort of let it slide by. And remember that the greatest defect any piece of fiction can have is not to be finished."

"I am a much better person and a better writer having had my children than I would be otherwise. I would have missed a whole aspect of the human experience that's tremendously fundamental to things like characterization. A lot of writers write as if the hero sort of popped out of the box at age 22 fully formed. And one thing that raising children does is give you some sense of how human beings really are put together. So when you go to put together a character you can have a more realistic sense of where people really come from, why they really behave the way they do and what a tremendous amount of life and complexity lies behind every human being. But I think you can get that from being a father too. I think it's something you can do by growing up and being observant even if you don't have children."

"I don't take information and experience into my mind in that organized a fashion, but when I want to bring it out, somehow it's there. You write what you know because — like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible."

""Thing is... she may get mad, but she isn't whiny or naggy about it. She doesn't store it up like a, a compost heap, all hot on the inside and rotting. She's angry like she has a right, and no one disputes it." She added after a moment, "Or tells her to be a good girl, or be quiet, or apologize. Or go to her room" ~ Lily Mason, on why she admires Captain Amma"

"Words won't break bones seemed like the lying-est lie Barr had ever been told, as a child. Bones knit eventually, he knew from close personal experience. The scars of slander, an insult not just delivered but believed, might never heal in a lifetime."

"Her eyes were full of new; it made them brighter."

"We see the world not as it is, but as we are. ~ Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield"

"Over and over in his career, Pen had confronted the insight that the gods did not care for humans' material concerns, much to the humans' dismay. Only with what record of them was carved into their souls by their unique and individual lives, presented as the final offering upon the alter of their deaths. All deaths, in whatever form. One by one, each attended to with the same singular consideration. Each valuated with the discernment of a connoisseur adding to his collection. Each placed in the niche found most fitting to it. Denied by self-will sometimes, by the gods' will at others, but never lost by carelessness."

"She used to ask, 'Why did the gods give [my son] to me if they were only going to take him away?' Learned Retaka never had an answer. "No," said Pen slowly, "that's backward. The gods do not give us our children. We give our children to the gods.""

"Tolga guided him not to the morgue, but to a patient chamber alloted mostly to a dozen crippled old indigent men, some brought in to be healed, some to die. For a beggar, Pen was not entirely sure it was a better death than in an alley or under a bridge; death was never a comfortable process, despite cots and sheets and usually overworked attendants, and it took longer here."

"Really, murmured Des, Tronio is like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions."

"No tactical plan should hinge on one’s enemy making the right mistake."

"“A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.”"

"I did not say that well, Pen fretted. No, said Des thoughtfully as they turned away, but you said it true. Which is better, and more rare."

"His further study of humanity had revealed just how much people could convince themselves that their own needs were those of the gods, and not the other way around."

"The man was embezzling demons?"

"“I thought you already knew everything.” “Knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. I have a profound need to understand. Everything.”"

"There were many Temple sorcerers in great Thasalon, which drew all men of ambition to it, whether like flies to honey or to manure a matter of opinion."

"“This is why medicine can’t be my calling,” said Pen dimly. “The demand is endless, and I’ve learned I am not. Only the gods could deal with all the world’s pain, all at once, all the time. It’s a wonder they’re not driven mad. Unless they have been, which would explain some things. Theologically speaking.”"

"Don’t borrow trouble the interest rate is much too high."

"It turns out languages are like children. Once you have six, adding a seventh hardly makes any difference."

"“Five gods avert,” said Rede. And then, after a pensive moment, “Do They?” “Not that I can tell,” said Pen. “I’ve sometimes wondered if the gods regard death not as a dreaded ending, but as a welcome beginning.” “Of what?” “I am deeply not sure. Which doesn’t stop people from making up a thousand tales.”"

"She made the best of herself through tidiness and health, not by the unearned gift that’s the blessing and curse of those born beautiful."

"Pen would pray to his God for guidance, but he never did get any back when he did that, so he supposed he must use his own judgment."

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times begins to seem like a message to be ignored at one’s peril."

"Some poetic epics extolled heroism in warriors; Adelis the actual soldier put his faith in logistics."

"Pen spared a moment of fresh loathing for the sectarian idiocy that made even children afraid."

"Just once, Pen thought glumly, he’d like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one."

"And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later."

"Time. It did not wait for any human want, or grief, or plan. Or careful list. Nearly half her life might be behind her already. It was time to get started on the next half."

"One gives you the shirt off his back, mused Des, and the other offers to help you bury bodies. I do believe you have made some new friends, Pen!"

"He wouldn’t say pray, as he’d decided long ago not to bother the gods with questions when he didn’t really want to hear the answers."