“
You can't force love, I realized. It's there or it isn't. If it's not there, you've got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you've got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2))
“
If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes (Platinum Fiction Series))
“
I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
“
In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)
“
Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
“
I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Devilin Fey (Naked Heat #1))
“
Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Other Side of Life)
“
A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement
”
”
Jess C. Scott
“
The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)
”
”
William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
“
I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
“
When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure from the inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything.
”
”
Chase Brooks (Hello, My Love 2: First Love Deserves a Second Chance)
“
And then there are the rare ones who know love, who understand it. Who freely give of themselves, demanding only a return of that love,that trust.
”
”
Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead (The Hollows, #3))
“
If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
”
”
Ray Bradbury
“
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
“
I'm so proud of you I could burst, but in the interest of saving the poor cleaning staff the hassle, I would, instead, like to take you to our room and lick you from stem to stern until you beg me to stop.
”
”
Therisa Peimer (Taming Flame)
“
We all know interspecies romance is weird.
”
”
Tim Burton
“
Why do you have such faith in me, Aurelia?"
"I've told you a million times that I love you, you make me feel safe and cherished, and you care deeply for our people. Why wouldn't I have faith in you?
”
”
Therisa Peimer (Taming Flame)
“
Everything I know, I know because of love.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
“
...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.
”
”
John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas)
“
Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could it not? Flaminius was utterly gorgeous. But once she fell in love with him, she became happily enslaved.
”
”
Therisa Peimer (Taming Flame)
“
So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.
”
”
Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)
“
When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.
”
”
Alice Hoffman (The Story Sisters)
“
The water far below was black in the shadow of the ship. A plank creaked. She froze. No noisy jump. It would have to be a dive. Head down into darkness. She’d never dived at night.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
Her unexpected outburst rocked Flaminius to his core. Suddenly, she didn't seem so angelic. Her face twisted with rage; veins in her neck throbbed with fury in a scene all too familiar. Her reaction switched him off to her instantly as all his worst fears came to life.
”
”
Therisa Peimer (Taming Flame)
“
But Phidias was better than most men since he made beautiful sculptures. He was even making one of her—well, he called it “Athena,” but anyone could see it looked like her.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
It had happened. Thucydides, his archrival, was a general. Glaucon, from his own tribe, was a general. And Pericles was no longer a general. He was just a citizen with one vote. And an idea
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
I knew from the moment I heard you, the moment I saw the gun and realized that this lovely, petit woman was the executioner, that you would never die waiting for me to save you - that you would save yourself.
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton (Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #10))
“
Please, touch me, I pray.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Intern)
“
You speak rabbit?” asked Princess Sophie.
“Of course,” said Lady Ariana. “And cat, dog, mouse, pig, and chicken. Fish, too. I am a magician, after all.
”
”
Mike Martin (Princess Sophie and the Christmas Elixir)
“
We’re not here to argue with you about the wisdom of our alliance that has kept the Persians at bay for forty years. An argument requires a measure of equality between those in the dispute and Samos is not the equal of Athens.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
I'm in love. And I like how that feels. And I hate how that feels. Because love is an invention of fiction writers.
”
”
Ellen Hopkins (Identical)
“
The softness, warmth and weight of her breast filled his palm. “I’ve imagined this for weeks,” he murmured. Thinking of her out there on the battlefield. In his tent. What more could a woman want? Quite a lot, actually.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show part is that you never stop loving someone. There's always a piece of them in your heart.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)
“
Running out the anchor line, the pirates babbled to one another, and in the tangle of their barbaric language, Aspasia listened for one word—Athens. It lit up the darkness in her mind, like the single glint her eyes fixed on above the distant gray-green hills.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.
He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.
”
”
Priya Ardis (Ever My Merlin (My Merlin, #3))
“
Aspasia had herself fallen into very good fortune. So good that at the age of twenty years, she’d probably used up the whole life’s portion of good luck that Tyche had allotted her. To make good fortune last—for herself and the child in her womb—would be up to her.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
I love you. That is the beginning, that is the end. That is everything.
”
”
Ella Frank (Blind Obsession)
“
...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.
”
”
Alice Hoffman (Local Girls)
“
My Aspasia. With her, he’d discovered the sweetness in life . . . and she might like to know that. He’d tell her sometime. But he knew he’d given this lovely woman what she’d wanted most, their son’s name. He leaned over to the child. “So, you’re Little Pericles.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
Who am I to deny gravity, Aurora? When you shine brighter than any constellation in the sky?
”
”
Jay Kristoff (Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1))
“
We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love.
”
”
Tim Farrington (The Monk Downstairs)
“
V shook his head. “Remember what you saw in that clearing, cop? How’d you like that anywhere near a female you loved?”
Butch put down the Bud without drinking from it. His eyes traveled over Rhage’s body.
“We’re going to need a shitload of steel,” the human muttered.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #2))
“
If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son.
”
”
Rudyard Kipling (If: A Father's Advice to His Son)
“
Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.
”
”
Clark Zlotchew
“
Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.
”
”
Margaret A. Edwards
“
I wanted to punch him and understand him at the same time.
”
”
Shannon A. Thompson (Take Me Tomorrow)
“
He was sure people detested accountants; they were boring. In fact, he had put down his profession as an airline pilot on the form he had filled in for a dating agency. As an airline pilot you could be away just the right amount of time, when you needed a break from your love life, without facing awkward questions from her when you got back.
”
”
Max Nowaz (Get Rich or Get Lucky)
“
I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.
”
”
Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1))
“
Are you a student of Shakespeare?"
"He's been dead a long time, so not precisely, but who isn't?" she said.
”
”
Lisa Kaniut Cobb (Down in the Valley (The Netahs))
“
She lowers the volume of this Safe and Top-Trending song titled... "Love Ain’t No Thang But a Chicken Wang.”
”
”
Adam Scott Huerta (Motive Black: A novel (Motive Black Series Book 1))
“
A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Maurice)
“
You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.
'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Coraline)
“
Is it still a fish cart when there’s no fish in it? When its false bottom is filled with children?
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
A celestial wizard doesn’t destroy celestial bodies. She bends them.
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.
This is how you lose her.
”
”
Junot Díaz (This Is How You Lose Her)
“
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (Rama II (Rama #2))
“
She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.
“Don’t wake up,” he said.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Trilogy, #2))
“
Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.
”
”
Frederick Buechner (The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction)
“
As Aristocleia raised her cup to toast Xanthippus, her gown slipped from her shoulders, exquisite as Aphrodite’s, and flowed like the water that slid over her naked breasts when she allowed him to watch her bathe. It was wonderful to possess a gem of a woman. It made a man feel beautiful and godlike himself, briefly.
”
”
Yvonne Korshak (Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece)
“
The truth has a way of coming out of the closet.
”
”
March Lions (The Last Sunset)
“
Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”
Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.
”
”
Priya Ardis (My Merlin Awakening (My Merlin, #2))
“
I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
The seclusion of this ranch house threatened to take her breath away, but she managed to smile. So this is what it’s like to be a country girl.
”
”
Cricket Rohman (Colorado Takedown (The McAllister Brothers, #1))
“
If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Plain Truth)
“
Only someone watching him closely like Celena would have noticed his intense preoccupation, and that something in a split second had happened to him. She wondered where he had gone when he should have been listening to the sermon, where his soul had gone went it had left his body.
”
”
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
“
Ketal is not hell! It’s the K’tul homeworld. What is the difference?
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies.
“They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Devilin Fey (Naked Heat #1))
“
She was a ray of sunshine, a warm summer rain, a bright fire on a cold winter’s day, and now she could be dead because she had tried to save the man she loved.
”
”
Grace Willows
“
Sunny, a silver boy of nine, daydreams of rescuing two princesses: “The princesses’ savior was a gallant knight. No! A prince! The valiant prince was surprisingly young. And silvered.
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
There are pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (King's Cage (Red Queen, #3))
“
We Yandar are winged. We don’t succumb to adversity; we fly with it.
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
He shredded my wings with his words.
”
”
Andri E. Elia (Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel)
“
...and he laughed a laugh she loved more than the warmest of fires on the coldest of nights.
”
”
Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya, #1))
“
One thing, though, was for sure – here I was, alive, healthy but as unquiet in my way as they were in theirs. Transcendent equality. You’ve got to love it.
”
”
Michael Wyndham Thomas (The Erkeley Shadows)
“
No one else can close the door that God has opened for you,” she quietly said under her breath. That was something that Grandma Alice had said to her many times before her death.
“I miss you, Alice,” she whispered, “and wish you were here with me now.
”
”
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
“
Ivy turned. 'He bit you on the neck?' she said, deadpan serious but for her eyes. 'Oh, then it's got to be love. She won't let me bite her neck.
”
”
Kim Harrison (Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows, #1))
“
How do you bear it?" Finnick looks at me in disbelief. "I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking up." Something in my expression stops him. "Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
“
I liked you the first time I saw you. You were sitting on the floor surrounded by books, and you looked up when I opened the door and smiled right at me. It felt like you had been waiting for me, like you were welcoming me home.
”
”
Josh Lanyon (Sort of Stranger Than Fiction (Petit Morts, #7))
“
How did I become President?
I began by setting an example, hanging out my own dirty laundry in front of Village Earth right from the start. Every ugly little life secret became a matter of public record. Of course, that included sordid love-life details.
”
”
Nancy Omeara (The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far])
“
As I reached the door, the constable said, “Good luck in Canada, son.” For a second I expected his voice to morph into Uncle Sid’s as he urged me to give his love to Rose Marie and the Mounties.
”
”
Michael Wyndham Thomas (The Erkeley Shadows)
“
Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions)
“
Let me ask you another question, if I may,” Jake says. “Have you ever been in love?”
“Yes. Sure, I have,” she answered defensively.
“No. I mean really in love. The kind of love that makes you abandon all reason and throw caution to the wind. The kind of love that makes you trade logic for passion?
”
”
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
“
She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.
And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.
I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.
Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.
”
”
Jodi Picoult
“
Oh, sorry, love. I was just getting out of the shower when I heard this loud commotion in front of my door.” Jake gave her a sloppy grin. “I didn’t realize there was a dress code when coming to the aid of a beautiful neighbor. I’ll keep it in mind for the next time I come running.
”
”
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
“
I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.
”
”
Jim Harrison
“
There are pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction. A ghost living inside a living boy I cannot begin to fathom. The ghost who sat by my bed while I dreamed in pain. The ghost who kept Samson from my mind as long as he could, I know, delaying an inevitable torture.
The ghost who loves me, in what poisoned way he can.
And I feel that poison working in me.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (King's Cage (Red Queen, #3))
“
I want to propose a toast!" Taking a spoon he noisily tapped it against the crystal glass. "Everyone!" He thundered, the large amount of whiskey he had consumed making him reckless. "To Victor, Ste. Genevieve's own inventor and my best friend, all the happiness in the world!" The happy crowd shouted their approval. "And to the ever, ever fair beauty Celena..." His voice cracking under the strain, and he wondered if he should stop now, before he embarrassed himself, before he made some horrible declaration.
”
”
Barbara Sontheimer (Victor's Blessing)
“
Often, when we have a crush, when we lust for a person, we see only a small percentage of who they really are. The rest we make up for ourselves. Rather than listen, or learn, we smother them in who we imagine them to be, what we desire for ourselves, we create little fantasies of people and let them grow in our hearts. And this is where the relationship fails. In time, the fiction we scribble onto a person falls away, the lies we tell ourselves unravel and soon the person standing in front of you is almost unrecognisable, you are now complete strangers in your own love. And what a terrible shame it is. My advice: pay attention to the small details of people, you will learn that the universe is far more spectacular an author than we could ever hope to be.
”
”
Beau Taplin
“
Only a psychopath would ever think of doing these things, only a psychopath would dream of abusing other people in such a way, only a psychopath would treat people as less than human just for money. The shocking truth is, even though they now have most if not all of the money, they want still more, they want all of the money that you have left in your pockets, they want it all because they have no empathy with other people, with other creatures, they have no feeling for the world which they exploit, they have no love or sense of being or belonging for their souls are dead, dead to all things but greed and a desire to rule over others.
”
”
Arun D. Ellis (Corpalism)
“
I’ve read hundreds of novels in my life, most of them claiming that love was the center of the universe. That it could heal any damage inside of us. That it was what we needed to survive. From Darcy to Heathcliff, I thought they were fools. That love was something fictional, only found in worn pages of a book. That it was just made up to keep humans full of hope, that it was a lie. But all that changed since I met my Elizabeth Bennett. I never thought I would find myself completely and utterly consumed by another until her. She took my hand and led me out of the darkness and showed me that, whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same.
I’m sorry, please forgive me.
You once asked me who I loved most in this world.
It’s you.
— Hardin ( Movie- "After" - Hardin's letter to Tessa )
”
”
Anna Todd
“
I’ll say, G’day to you, Mr. Ryan!” Catherine said as she quickly closed the door in his face. “Oh, the arrogance,” she growled under her breath, leaning her back up against the closed door. “He thinks he’s so irresistible with his rugged good looks and sexy accent.”
“I’m standing right here, and I can hear you!” came Jake’s muffled words from the other side of the door. “Oh, c’mon love. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was offending you.
”
”
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
“
Longing surged up within me. I wanted it. Oh God, I wanted it. I didn't want to hear Jerome chastise me for my "all lowlifes, all the time" seduction policy. I wanted to come home and tell someone about my day. I wanted to go out dancing on the weekends. I wanted to take vacations together. I wanted someone to hold me when I was upset, when the ups and downs of the world pushed me too far.
I wanted someone to love.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid, #1))
“
On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...
Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
”
”
Stanisław Lem (Solaris)
“
I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That's what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling writers….This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.
”
”
Philip K. Dick
“
If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and not recognizably human, etc.--is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then [Bret] Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. There's some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage… The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years.
We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent.
You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.
A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.
”
”
David Foster Wallace
“
Chase looked like a drowning man without a life preserver, and by the look in his eyes, he was going under for the third time.
“I knew you would be like the waters of the South Pacific Ocean.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I liken people to different bodies of water,” he quickly explained.
“You what?”
“Each ocean has a different personality,” he said to clarify. “The Pacific Ocean is warmer and inviting, but the color is muddied in places. The Arctic Ocean is cold and very uninviting, one might even say that it is not very appealing, but it’s full of life. Then there is the South Pacific Ocean, warm, inviting, and crystal clear. It has this purity to it. Why, the coloring of the water is some of the brightest blue I’ve ever seen in my entire life. There are even places that you can see thirty meters down.
”
”
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
“
He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love is nevertheless excluded from his work, it's because he never quite felt that he deserved to receive it. He was a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself. What looked like gentle contours from a distance were in fact sheer cliffs. Sometimes only a little of him was crazy, sometimes nearly all of him, but, as an adult, he was never entirely not crazy. What he'd seen of his id while trying to escape his island prison by way of drugs and alcohol, only to find himself even more imprisoned by addiction, seems never to have ceased to be corrosive of his belief in his lovability. Even after he got clean, even decades after his late-adolescent suicide attempt, even after his slow and heroic construction of a life for himself, he felt undeserving. And this feeling was intertwined, ultimately to the point of indistinguishability, with the thought of suicide, which was the one sure way out of his imprisonment; surer than addiction, surer than fiction, and surer, finally, than love.
”
”
Jonathan Franzen
“
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.
Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.
”
”
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
“
When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.
Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.
That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.
Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb
Iron Dragon's Daughter
gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?
Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge.
The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.
”
”
China Miéville
“
-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength,
to resist our weaknesses,
-We need more inspiration,
to lighten up our innermind.
-We need more learning,
to erase our ignorance,
-We need more wisdom,
to live longer and happier,
-We need more truths, to suppress deceptions,
-We need more health,
to enjoy our wealth,
-We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren
-We need more smiles,
to brighten up our day,
-We need more hero's, and not zero's,
-We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others,
-We need more understanding,
to tackle our misunderstanding,
-We need more sympathy,
not apathy,
-We need more forgiveness,
not vengeance,
-We need more humility to be lifted up,
-We need more patience and not undue eagerness,
-We need more focus, to avoid distraction,
-We need more optimism,
not pessimism
-We need more justice,
not injustice,
-We need more facts, not fiction,
-We need more education,
to curb illiteracy,
-We need more skills, not incompetence,
-We need more challenges,
to make attempts,
-We need more talents,
to create the extraordinary,
-We need more helping hands,
not stingy folks,
-We need more efforts,
not laziness,
-We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality,
not mean religion,
-We need more freedom,
not enslavement,
-We need more peacemakers,
not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson