Fantasy Fiction Quotes

As we drifted away from the Tower Bridge, I saw a single silhouette standing against the bright lamplight. Even now when I was nearly asleep, I could recognise her. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she was upset. Whether she was upset that she had nearly killed me or that she had let me get away, I was unsure. Then she turned around and walked to join the other silhouettes standing in a group farther back. Now I could not see which one was Rose – they were all joint together to make one.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

The four of us stood in silence as we watched the surrounding girls play games or gossip. It was almost as if I did not belong here anymore. It was like I was peering in through a window from a completely different world.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

We laughed as we ducked behind a pile of snow. Then our brothers came charging through the barrier, sending the four of us sliding down a white slope full of cherished memories.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

She was not in the body of a young woman but just as I remembered her: a little toddler with a beautiful smile. She reached out with her small hand, and I gripped her tiny fingers as I let go of the pain and sank deeper into the lake.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

I opened my eyes and watched the water stream past me. I let out some of my air and gazed at the cascade of silver bubbles dancing up to the surface.

~ Erica Sehyun Song

Without the journey and crucial moment of understanding, I would still be questioning everything before me. I know now that I must trust what comes next, for there is a plan greater than the one I can see at work.

~ Brynn Myers

The horrifying sound of breaking glass, and a thunderous tirade of splintering pieces hitting the floor, stunned them all. Tobin spun around in shock. The massive Travelling Mirror, through which Tobin and Murphy had so recently arrived, shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces, cascading down the wall, and onto the floor in an enormous pile of jagged edges. The hall was still as everyone stared at the shattered mirror in shocked silence. “Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear,” whispered Elbert.

~ R.s. Mollison-Read

Shaking his head, Tobin turned back to his picnic spread, and there, sitting on the end of the checkered cloth, and helping himself to one of Tobin’s cupcakes, was a tiny brown squirrel.Tobin blinked in surprise.The squirrel was exceptionally bold. He made absolutely no move to leave, despite Tobin’s frown, and merely stuffed more pink icing into his mouth with one tiny paw. His ears were tufted into small points, and he tilted his head to the side as he surveyed Tobin with bright, inquisitive eyes.Tobin had to laugh. “Well, I suppose I don’t mind sharing with you, little guy, even if you did eat one of my cupcakes,” Tobin chuckled to himself.“I should hope so. Frankly, I’m surprised that you thought you could even eat five cupcakes all by yourself,” the squirrel replied airily.

~ R.s. Mollison-Read

Maven Gustav, what is that awful noise?” Tobin bellowed, holding his hands over his ears.“Why, it’s my very own creation!” Gustav replied, beaming with pride. “I made this spell to be activated in the event of a castle emergency. In all my tests, it never failed to wake everyone,” he noted, proudly.“Yes, Gustav. It’s fantastically loud. Well done. But what is the emergency, and how do we turn the alarm off?

~ R.s. Mollison-Read

The blue foam spread quickly, and had almost entirely enveloped the room, moving rapidly towards the last clear door, when suddenly the door burst open, and Simon, looking flushed, and panting heavily, stepped into the room.“Nooooooo!” shrieked Maven Ellie; a shocking sound out of the usually calm and cheerful magician. But it was too late.The foam, already covering most of the room, seemed to stiffen for a moment, before a molten red glow began to take over. The foam hissed, as though in anger, and at an alarmingly fast rate, it raced towards Simon, who had frozen obligingly, the moment Maven Ellie had screamed.A look of terror crept over his face at the sight of the crimson foam racing towards him. Desperately, he tried to move away, but the foam had already reached his feet, and he was stuck fast. Maven Thom, in a rather stunning display of athleticism for a man of his age, made a running leap for the small space that remained between Simon and the door, just barely clearing the approaching foam. The foam continued to climb up Simon’s legs and chest, covering his neck and face in seconds, until he was completely encased in the hardened foam.

~ R.s. Mollison-Read

If the future was bared before you, would it still be yours? If the past could chase you, would you run from it? If the world crumbled tonight, would you carve your own?

~ Nicholas Rinth

Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library.Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot.Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing.Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until the end fell off.Then he ate it.

~ Terry Pratchett

Wake early, take more!

~ Julie Elise Landry

Then perhaps you don’t need it. I think the scar gives you character, even if it does mar those pretty tattoos. Would make for great tavern stories if you didn’t cover it.” Neferre laughed flatly and stuck her hands in her pockets. “There’s nothing great about getting mugged, Ziro.” Ziro laughed, her deep voice jiggling her second chin. “Oh, aye. But no one said you had to tell the truth now, did they?

~ Ash Gray

Return me safely to my home,” the princess said, “and I shall reward you with your weight in eggs.” Olorun snorted derisively. “You’re joking, right?” The woman’s eyes flitted in embarrassment. “Now wait a minute,” said Helianthus. “We’re talkin’ eggs here. What sort of eggs? Ostrich eggs?” Neferre made an impatient noise. “Hel! She doesn’t have any eggs! Unless they’re hidden in a very . . . delicate place.” Neferre grinned at the princess. “Tell me your eggs are hidden where I think they’re hidden.

~ Ash Gray

Kimaria smirked and placed her hands behind her back. “Come now. It doesn’t have to come to that. Violence is so beneath us.” “No, it isn’t,” said Helianthus at once.“Well . . . it is beneath me,” the high queen said and touched a hand to her chest. “Unlike you, I am civilized. I wear shoes and I have a last name.” They watched as she eased into a chair. She crossed one leg over the other, folded her arms, and regarded them calmly. “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to how I snatched the famed Nineveh Atvaris from our dark past? You can’t be that boring.

~ Ash Gray

Verne frowned. “Calm down. Don’t exert yourself in your condition.” Salen looked at Verne in amazement. “Don’t exert --! My dear woman, we are all about to die! I don’t think it damn well matters if I shit my pants at this point --

~ Ash Gray

Helianthus snorted. “Olorun is like his mother: he will only change as the face of a rock changes. But . . . I think he missed you.

~ Ash Gray

My child will bear those scars forever,” Tilv said angrily. “And if he isn’t a fool, perhaps your child will learn from them,” Neferre returned calmly.

~ Ash Gray

Neferre swallowed hard. “The elder used to tell stories of dark places in dark times,” she said, picking the needle through with black nails, “when the winters were endless and the sun fell cold across the land. When beasts far worse than the crags prowled the shadows. And there were no humans. Only elvkarin and the night. We knew the bitter sting of winter’s breath and it never ended as it ends now. We called it Isaria on Evile. A Time of Darkness.

~ Ash Gray

Why does everything want to eat children?!”Neferre smiled. “Because you taste like candy. Stinky socks would mask your delicious scent from the aziza. We must get you stinky socks. So they do not eat you.”“That’s not much of a bedtime story! You really haven’t done this before!

~ Ash Gray

It is a very difficult thing, to love another.To some it comes easily, naturally even. Whilst for others, the road to such things is long and arduous and fraught with danger.

~ Ross Turner

:The way to the Seaglass Stair will be long and arduous. There will be those who wish to stop you. They will kill you to keep you from succeeding.: :Why? That’s insane.: :As if insanity were some fabrication, some dark tale Hemfra told you one night when you were a child and refused to sleep. There will always be resistance to anything and everything, defying all logic, all natural sense of self-preservation. There will be those who wish for you to simply let the world fade away. It is the way of humans to be illogical for the sake of personal conviction and made up nonsense.:

~ Ash Gray

Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales.And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor.

~ Brian W. Aldiss

The raven – Asker – immediately cawed. It sounded suspiciously like laughter. “Not... be afraid of Asker.” The raven’s button eyes gleamed. “He only eats worms… you are not worm.

~ Tim Reed

He stood taller, and straighter, and broader, and infinitely more human than anything else Marcii could possibly imagine.

~ Ross Turner

He was like nothing she’d ever known.Marcii hoped she would come to know him, for he was all she could ever have asked for and more.

~ Ross Turner

And yet the night was still fresh: young as new dawn.There was still time for worlds to change, if that was to be their fate.

~ Ross Turner

She has no interest in human quarrels, for they are often petty and always pointless.

~ Ross Turner

If this was what it meant to be human, for now she saw more clearly than she ever had done, she didn’t want to be.

~ Ross Turner

You don’t approve?” Joan asked, picking up on Delphine’s tone. “Their stories were for themselves, not the Mirrors.”“What do you mean?” said Bea.“Certainly sometimes a good little character would find a lamp, and would not be so corrupted by the strangely endless possibilities of three wishes that they ended up causing more harm than they ever imagined. Those stories fostered belief, they were retold, certainly; but they were few and far between. Most of the genie’s tales showed the characters exactly who they really were, not when they were despised and degraded, not when they’d reached the gutter and been given licence to look at the stars. No, the genies showed them who they were when they were invincible. The characters, they try to forget stories like that.

~ F.d. Lee

How can we learn the value of saying no, if we didn’t occasionally say yes?

~ F.d. Lee

Mistasinon stood as the music of life flowed around him, the instrument of his agency muted.

~ F.d. Lee

The woman above him had tumbled out of his dreams, and now stood like a half-waking ghost, a photograph double exposed, showing him in one moment the fallacy of his past as it bled into his future. The image of Maria Sophia had grown too large for him to bear. He had made it so. In his industry and creativity he had transformed her into something so wonderful that the very fact she might now be anything less terrified him almost as much as the prospect she might exceed it.

~ F.d. Lee

This is what a castle sounded like when it died, and he knew he would never forget it.

~ Steven Poore

Here's a tragedy for you. Arca the Brave, one of the last heroes of Cape Magister, the man who held the line at the Usurper's Fields, who saw even the mighty Guhl fall and die... now he sleeps on my floor and begs for scraps like a dog. Perhaps there are some wars that are not worth fighting.

~ Steven Poore

Death drives desire.

~ Rosemary A. Johns

Each day Marda gets closer. The sub circles coral reefs off the coasts, where mermaids are said to like the colors of the schools of fishes, and train them to swim around their necks like jewelry or live behind their ears, beneath their long hair. Sometimes mermaids like shallow places, but mostly they like the dark and the beautiful, uncharted, abandoned, soulless parts of the undiscovered world.

~ Holly Walrath

You know those vampire myths? Bollocks to them.

~ Rosemary A. Johns

…dancing in the carnage and the flames.

~ Rosemary A. Johns