Fantasy Quotes

After all, history is a type of fantasy. For all the primary source research, in the end, the past world the historian builds is as weird and remote from our own as Middle Earth or Narnia, yet oddly familiar.

~ Ysabeau S. Wilce

It is necessary to distinguish between history and fantasy wherever possible. And then use them against each other.

~ Geoff Ryman

she was like the merlin in pursuit of its airborne quarry, perhaps the snow bunting or a small meadow pipit; the avian prey is nimble but so is the predatory merlin with its inexhaustible stamina and unparalleled agility – round and round it chases the pipit, and the two flying at speeds almost impossible for the observer to follow.

~ Gregory Figg

Even if yesterday existed, today is just real, not a fantasy like the past.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The aim here is not to separate fact from fantasy but to show how each embodies a distinct class of knowledge and how one is deeply implicated in the other.

~ Constance Penley

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle.

~ Shannon L. Alder

... the reader is probably wondering that if Tolkien did indeed fashion two of his heroic characters from Catholic prophecies, what about the evil protagonists? Were any of them inspired by these little-known revelations concerning future times? The answer is yes, but to discover the links between the myth and the prophecies, we must venture not only into the realm of unnerving revelations, but also into the murky world of secret sects, dark plots, occult signs, bloody revolutions and conspiracy theories ~ we must probe deep into the burning Eye of Sauron.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ...

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

The truth, at times, can be the hardest pill to swallow. When we are confronted by something new, something that threatens to shake us from our comfortable tree, shatters our illusions, we resist. It takes courage to swim against the tide of popular opinion. Most of us would rather hold on to the safety buoy than strike out into unchartered seas. If you are one of these, don't bother to read this true account of the Frankenstein myth, hold tightly to your buoy and be carried to the shores of the known and familiar, you will be safe. I do not wish to make you feel uncomfortable in your skin, that is not my aim. My goal is to set the story straight and not pander to the fickle minded.This version of events is so far removed from the common misguided perceptions held by us all, and will so challenge the accepted beliefs generated by cheap fiction, that there will be many who will call me charlatan or fraud. They do not possess the will, or wherewithal, to want to know the truth or even suspend their judgement so that the record might be set straight for posterity. Possibly, they might be the last remnants of the flat earth society and still trying to convince the rest of us where we are going wrong. If nothing else, I salute their commitment and tenacity. This book is not for them.There it is. I have forewarned you against reading this account of the tortured genius of Baron von Frankenstein. If you are not ready for the truth, stay safe and warm in your insulated ivory towers and remain ignorant of the catastrophe that befell him and the people of the town of Frankenstein. It is not my loss...

~ Paul Lord

If there is one sound the follows the march of humanity, it is the scream.

~ David Gemmell

Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

~ Terry Pratchett

I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness of your eternal madness.

~ Steven Erikson

My hours are filled with fantasy and indifference. In day and night dreams, I think of my heaven with you. All the time in between, I carelessly spend in hell without you.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Sibyl, what do you want?”“I want to live,” the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. “I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I read, write and create. I must lose myself in work, so that there is no space for the other/anything else.

~ Patricia Highsmith

Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it.

~ Patricia Highsmith

There is nothing else in magic but the wild thought of the bird as it casts itself into the void. There is no creature upon the earth with such potential for magic. Even the least of them may fly straight out of this world and come by chance to the Other Lands. Where does the wind come from that blows upon your face, that fans the pages of your book? Where the harum-scarum magic of small wild creatures meets the magic of Man, where the language of the wind and the rain and the trees can be understood, there we will find the Raven King.

~ Susanna Clarke

The father and daughter made their way north, through unknown sylvan paradises where only the owls and skunks know their way around. The hard work of paddling non-stop for many hours had long since stopped being difficult for Saweyimew. In spite of her beauty and grace, her back had grown strong and sinewy from years of canoe trips. She reveled in the exhilaration it always brought her, after the first few hours left her body insensible to pain or discomfort. Warm and tingly, lulled into peaceful contemplation by hours of the rhythmic paddling, the smell of the water, exotic blooms, animal musk. It all combined as one to make her feel so alive. Especially when it rained, and her body steamed against the cool drops, feeling invincible against the elements. The mountain of her father's back was like a rock against anything nature could throw against them. The stream of fragrant pipe-smoke still flowing from his lips, regardless of any obstacle. She felt at that moment, nothing would ever stop her father's pipe from smoking. Nothing, not death, not any force of the living or spirit world, would ever still her father's heart. Rain cleansing her to the core, she was a spring of raw power and self-reliance, paddling against all adversity--their master completely. Her father's daughter. At times like that, when it rained, she entirely understood and shared her father's outlook on life.

~ Alexei Maxim Russell

Fantastic ideas often come from fantasy.

~ Debasish Mridha

One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.

~ Joe Abercrombie

Unreality cooled reality’s burn.

~ Cameron Conaway

Shut up, shut up, will you! Nobody minds that you are in pain. Pain is a human condition. You do not care that I am hungry, do you? And therefore I do not need to care whether you are in agony. Nobody is hurting you! Be quiet, be quiet! Rannig, fill his mouth with dirt, and I’m sure I do not care what diseases he contracts. He has already been in the water. He has probably swallowed millions of pestilential microbes, and they are none of them acting too quickly. Do you hear me? I say shut up, sir! By my hat—the man makes a noise to shatter teeth! Here, what are you complaining about?” Bartleby looked over and saw where Shandandzo was gripping himself. “Oh, they are only knees! You have two of them and an immune system—the body heals, if you leave it alone! You need not shout about it!” He took the headwrap from Rannig’s hand and shoved it into Shandandzo’s mouth. “There. That will quiet you for a while. Don’t you know there are men reading and having their tea? Shameful of you to carry on in this way. The captain only put your knife behind your kneecaps and made a few fractures. Hardly anything to cry about at all. A man has no business crying about kneecaps. A tendon, I grant you, might deserve a paltry yelp or two, but you are alive and you have your health otherwise— you can want nothing else. You hardly need your knees when you are always on the gad, stealing priceless artifacts from visiting dignitaries—and you are a noble besides. Nobles have money: they hardly need feelings or knees. They have men for that.” He snuffed and watched Shandandzo’s eyes roll back in his head. “Now, if you will be a very good convulsing noble, or whatever it is you are, you will be quiet and make no more fuss about your knees.” He turned back toward the teahouse, humphed to himself, and moved to go, but turning back, he said, “And if you make anymore obnoxious noises whilst I am writing my notes, I will have the boy throw you down a well.

~ Michelle Franklin

I'd never known that I could feel this broken and whole at once.

~ Rachel L. Schade

Her eyes bled from venomous anger...Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered...Her life had slowly turned into a blunder...There was no more thinking further....She would rather become a Foetus murderer Than end up a hopeless mother....Of course, she found peace in the formerUntil later years of emotional traumaOh, the foetus hunt was forever!The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.

~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

She says affection is all very well being imagined, like a romantic fancy, but marriage should be based on practical purposes in order to last longer.

~ Aya Ling

You are the sum total of what you have seen and learned, but underneath that is a core being, a usually untouchable being, that makes you who you truly are. It can make a person into a great peacemaker like Ghandi, or a serial killer like Ted Bundy, but it is immutable. That core holds both our deepest darkness and our greatest light. It’s the harmonies layered on top of that core melody that make us who we are from day to day.

~ Dana Marie Bell

A song she heardOf cold that gathersLike winter's tongueAmong the shadowsIt rose like blacknessIn the skyThat on volcano'sVomit riseA Stone of ruinFrom burn to chillLike black moonriseHer voice fell still...

~ Robert Fanney

Good music always defeats bad luck.

~ Jack Vance

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.

~ Peter S. Beagle

Music took her somewhere, and I used to wonder where. I thought it was dumb, the way she lived for a collection of sounds, for someone else's words and notes.

~ Megan Lindholm

In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Averill often told herself stories-- the activity seemed to her as unavoidable as dreaming.) Her singing was a barrier set between the world in her head and the world outside, between her body and the onslaught of the stars.

~ Alice Munro

Everybody says you have to decide between the head and the heart, but that’s just so much bullshit. Your heart and your head don’t know a damn thing between them when it comes to other people. Your head can know facts about them, sure—like a criminal record or a Purple Heart—but that’s about it. And your heart only knows how it feels and what it wants, not what the other person is feeling . . .

~ Dani Harper

Kind of like CSI investigating a social error—Here’s the corpse of the situation, what do you think killed it?—with the hope of preventing further fatalities. Often as not, it boiled down to missed cues.

~ Dani Harper

Sometimes the universe conspires to give you what you really want, Liam. And it’s your job to let it.

~ Dani Harper

I think it’s the whole ‘bad boy who’s so good but destined to break your heart’ fantasy. Which doesn’t sound like much of a fantasy when you put the broken heart part in the picture, but it is. It so is.

~ Lisa Renee Jones

The key to the world is the key to your self and the key to yourself is the key to the world.

~ Iva Kenaz

If you try to take our heart without earning our soul, our heart will break

~ Kristen Callihan

I love you. He stabbed a thumb at his chest as he glared at her.Of course he did. Lucien had never hidden the fact. But the love of a friend, while comforting, was not enough anymore.It did not soothe the restless discomfort that pushed against her chest or quell the loneliness that seemed to grow within her each passing day.

~ Kristen Callihan

And I was your moon because I shined brighter than any other star in your universe and you were my darkness. Without you I could not see the depth of my light and with you I could set the night a glow. So we needed one another—the dark and the light. Your fear. My courage. Connected, but separated. Different, but the same. A synergy that made no sense, but every bit of sense. We were neither a beginning, nor an end. We were somewhere in between our madness at sunset and the reality we awakened to with each sunrise. We were the ghosts of timing and fate. We were neither fantasy, nor reality--- we were a purpose somewhere in between.

~ Shannon L. Alder