Author Fantasy Quotes & Sayings

While every new fantasy author is hailed as unique, new, and different, Brandon Sanderson's ELANTRIS does indeed provide an absorbing adventure in a unique, different, and well-thought-out fantasy world, with a few nifty twists as well. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

If you've never experienced something and don't know how to write about it, then make it a fantasy book. It gives you a lot of freedom. — B.A. Gabrielle

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions. — Michelle M. Pillow

With each daunting step, the armor I'd always worn like a protective cloak unraveled, and my footing faltered. — E.R. Pierce

You have to hold on and be patient. Pain lasts for a while, but you must leave room for happiness when you find it. — S.N. Lemoing

Let's just say that once the party was over, the Tribe had the decency to put most of the things back into place with the possible, and otherwise notable, exception of the platypus and a moronic drinking game that later evolved into the imperial measurement system. — Sorin Suciu

This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity. — Brandon Sanderson

The truth is that good fantasies carefully limit the magic that's possible. In fact, the magic has to be defined, at least in the author's mind, as a whole new set of natural laws that cannot be violated during the course of the story. That is, if at the beginning of the story you have established that your hero can make only three wishes, you better not have him come up with a fourth wish to save his neck right at the end. That's cheating, and your reader will be quite correct to throw your book across the room and carefully avoid anything you ever write in the future. All speculative fiction stories have to create a strange world and introduce the reader to it - but good fantasy must also establish a whole new set of natural laws, explain them right up front, and then faithfully abide by them throughout. — Orson Scott Card

But when the wizard is onstage as the main character, you have to adopt what I call the Jack Vance Rule. I call it this because Jack Vance is the first author successfully and adroitly to have applied this rule in his The Dying Earth. The Jack Vance Rule is: (1) The wizard has to be able to do something unusual, or else he is not a wizard, (2) he cannot do everything, or else there is no drama; therefore (3) the story teller has to communicate to the reader whatever the dividing line is that separates what the wizard can do from what he cannot do, so that the reader can have a reasonable expectation of knowing what the wizard can and cannot do. — John C. Wright

Helen Lowe writes wonderful stories, yes, but her work also speaks with lyricism to deeper questions of how we treat each other. With lovely prose that brings vivid life to her characters, she creates a universe with people we care about. This is an author with a gift for fantasy. — Catherine Asaro

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I've thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How should traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a school of thought that holds that women must be treated precisely like men. Only the traditional male sphere of power and means of wielding power count. If a woman is shown in a traditionally female role, then she must be being shown as inferior.
After a lot of thought, and some real-life stabs at those traditional roles, I've come to firmly disagree with this idea. For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses. — Sarah Zettel

This is for everyone who has ever looked at the stars, or gazed from atop a hill, or across the sea and wondered ... — Tim Perkins

Affection is when we can't find any flaws in the other. Maybe I could if I really wanted to, but I don't want to, I accept you as you are. — Erika M. Szabo

No, I will not join your Civil War reenactment troupe. — Aaron A.A. Smith

This series will be released under the author name Martin R Mortimer, in order to distinguish the Fantasy genre works from the Science Fiction works of M R Mortimer, although some of the existing SF would also appeal to a fantasy audience (such as "Shades of Farthrow.") The two will remain connected. The pen name change is for branding purposes, and to allow readers to easily distinguish between the two genres." - thecinderchronicles — Martin R Mortimer

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down. RAY BRADBURY Prolific American author of science fiction and fantasy — Jack Canfield

(From the Author Note at the beginning of the book.) Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world
because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded and in the end all was made right.
I'd like to think that fantasy does the same thing. It reminds us that this is how it should be, and maybe if we all put our minds to it a little more, this is how it will be. The good will be rewarded. The bad will be punished. Sins will be forgiven.
And they will live happily ever after. — Mercedes Lackey

Erasing is exercise for the hands — Elizabeth Rawls

If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better. — Alexandar Tomov

I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies. — Donita K. Paul

I think people need hope when times are tough. I think they also need escape and adventure and fantasy. Books are like cheap mini vacations. — Michelle M. Pillow

You and that amazing body of yours will be the cause of some too-appreciative witch's death. Maybe two witches." Or a dozen, her fire spirit hissed. — N.D. Jones

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I never liked the influence of others when it came to feelings. I rather went through the painful process of analyzing everything half to death. — Erika M. Szabo

What kind of person do you wish to be? A part of those who take action, who try the hardest, or of those who go with the flow? — S.N. Lemoing

I imagined my fantasy co-author would look like Miranda Kerr, but have the intellect and comedic timing of Liz Lemon. — Judy Greer

This is what award-winning author and international journalist TIMERI MURARI had to say:

Dear Anant

I managed to read 'Skewed Fantasy' a charming story on Chitra and her problems with NRIs and her dreams.

Best wishes
Timeri — Anant Acharya

Everyone writes the book he or she loves to read. Great authors write the books others love to read. — Chuck Miceli

Anthony Ryan is a new fantasy author destined to make his mark on the genre. His debut novel, Blood Song, certainly has it all: great coming of age tale, compelling character, and a fast-paced plot. If his first book is any indication of things to come, then all fantasy readers should rejoice as a new master storyteller has hit the scene. — Michael J. Sullivan

Tales of ordinary characters would appeal to a larger class , but I have no wish to make such an appeal . The opinions of the masses are of no interest to me , for praise can truly gratify only when it comes from a mind sharing the author's perspective . There are probably seven persons in all , who really like my work and they are enough . I should write even if I were the only patient reader , for my aim is merely self expression . I could not write about ' ordinary people ' because I am not in the least interested in them . Without interest there can be no art . Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy . It is man's relations to the cosmos - to the unknown - which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination . — H.P. Lovecraft

At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it. — C.S. Lewis

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear. — Patricia Fuller

That evening we sat in the courtyard of the hotel once more, watching the sun sink below the western isles. I told Alexi what had happened that day. I fancied I could glimpse the grey stone wall of Lismore House on its island hilltop, the red light of the setting sun glinting from the windows, and from there the wasted frame of Jonathan Blake gazing out across the sea, on nothing, his boy waiting for him to die. But it was my fantasy, simply the image on my mind, like the image burned on to your eyes when you have stared too long at the sun, the passing footprint of a creature long gone. — P.B. North

Love isn't easy. It isn't perfect like in stories or movies--but it's real. When we feel it, it reminds us we are alive, and when we truly feel it--it hurts like hell--but it reminds us why we live... For the hope of love. — N.A. Koziol

A writer's role was never just to tell stories, but to create a world to encompass and share with others. — Solange Nicole

I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it, no matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me. — Adam Langer

Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers
if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes. — Dorothy L. Sayers

THE NAME OF THE WIND has everything fantasy readers like, magic and mysteries and ancient evil, but it's also humorous and terrifying and completely believable. As with all the very best books in our field, it's not the fantasy trappings (wonderful as they are) that make this novel so good, but what the author has to say about true, common things, about ambition and failure, art, love, and loss. — Tad Williams

I love the word 'fantasy' ... but I love it for the almost infinite room it gives an author to play: an infinite playroom, of a sort, in which the only boundaries are those of the imagination. I do not love it for the idea of commercial fantasy. Commercial fantasy, for good or for ill, tends to drag itself through already existing furrows, furrows dug by J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, leaving a world of stories behind it, excluding so much. There was so much fine fiction, fiction allowing free reign to the imagination of the author, beyond the shelves of genre. That was what we wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

Bah, he still saw the same stupidity. The image of the hanged man in the farming community of Yondern flashed through his mind. Now there was a war brewing between the Steelwielders and some foreign religion. More mindless loss over beliefs and mythology. But.. he could not deny the noble features in his companions. Although Perfidian was too blithe and Elaina too didactic, they had risked their life to do what was right. He did owe them his life. He could not deny the nobility he saw in many different people, bits and pieces of nobility that shined through under pressure. The guards who risked their lives to protect the villagers, Markham who flew at the dangerous dwarf, swords flashing; even an Eruthian merchant who stopped in his journey to share tales with complete strangers'. — T.P. Grish

I set out to write a series of grand stories starring queer people. My vision has always been to let that "queerness" exist organically without it being the focus of the story. Growing up, I got sick of "tragedy porn" slice of life novels being the only LGBT literature in existence. Here I hope that I captured the idea that queer people can own a high fantasy adventure without the story being reliant solely on the characters' "queerness" alone. — Hazel Blackthorn

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

If fiction and fantasy books are escapism, then let an author write them so as to better equip the reader to face reality by the end. — Brett Armstrong

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. — Julio Cortazar

I beg your pardon. Sometimes, it's true I can be stubborn.'
'Sometimes?' she added derisively.
'Quite often,' he tempered. — S.N. Lemoing

Reading is not passive. It is only when the reader brings his/her own experiences to the work and breathes life into the author's words that they consummate the relationship and together bring the story to life. — Chuck Miceli

One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by Babel and Bulgakov. It is a tradition, paradoxically, of experimenters and innovators. Perhaps the principal quality that unites them is their approach to reality and its uses in art - the refusal to be bound by literal fact, the interweaving of reality and fantasy, the transmutation of fact into poetry, often grotesque, oblique, playful, but always expressive of the writer's unique vision of life in his own, unique terms. — Mirra Ginsburg

Yeah, I write Urban Fantasy, but its more like Die Hard or Indiana Jones with Fairies, Mummies and a Vampire who uses guns more than his teeth. — Kevin James Breaux

There's a word for an author who doesn't give up ... published. — J.A. Konrath

As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again. — Michelle M. Pillow

Neither in the deepest ocean
Nor in the perpetual snow
Heaven was on earth that day
For some reason we are yet to know — Sameer Kumar

Daniel, I was asked of a budding author, how do you know if your story is on track? My answer: I start by knowing my intention, my target. Then, with purpose, I write the scene that unfolds before me, as faithfully as is human. - Daniel LaMonte — Daniel LaMonte

New rule: every fantasy author who doesn't treat horses like tireless hairy motorcycles automatically gets a Hugo. — Jim C. Hines

If I cared what people thought I probably wouldn't be a fantasy author. — Nicholas Taylor

Where have all the Fembots gone? — Ren Garcia

I'm a blank canvas that I can paint however I desire. For the first time ever, I get to be the character in my own fantasy land. — E.K. Blair

I read so I might live a thousand lives in a lifetime. I write to control the particulars in those lives. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The unification of worlds is an author's priority, as one of them surely resides forbidden to the public. — P.A. Wunderlich

May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, and my spirit brave. — Kate Forsyth

John DeChancie is a popular author of numerous science fiction/fantasy novels including the hugely entertaining CASTLE series and STARRIGGER trilogy. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. — John DeChancie