Fantastical Quotes & Sayings

What with our hooks, snares, nets, and dogs, we are at war with all living creatures, and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate. — Seneca The Younger

Certain kinds of people, and a fortiori certain kinds of writers, have always experienced the world around them in the Gothic manner, I'm almost positive. Perhaps there was even some little stump of an apeman who witnessed prehistoric lightning as it parried with prehistoric blackness in a night without rain, and felt his soul rise and fall at the same time to behold this sublime and terrifying conflict. Perhaps such displays provided inspiration for those very first imaginings that were not born of our daily life of crude survival, who knows? Could this be why all our primal mythologies are Gothic - that is, fearsome, fantastical, and inhuman? — Thomas Ligotti

But the incredible thing for me in this moment was to see both these masks, of one and the same Being, melt inseparably into each other. Because here for the first time an agonising conflict resolved itself, which I, great-grandson of an idealistic, grandson of a romantic, and son of a materialistic race, had hitherto regarded as irreconcilable. It didn't exactly happen that an Either-Or metamorphosed into an As-Well-As. No, the real is just as fantastical as the fantastical is real.
That was the wonderful thing which delighted us about the doubled images we observed through the stereoscope as children: In the same moment in which they melted together into a single picture, the new dimension of depth burst out from them. — Ernst Junger

What's this flesh? A little cruded milk
Fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those
Paper prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible,
Since our is to preserve earth-worms. Didst thou ever seen
A lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world
Is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads
Like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge
Of the small compass of our prison. — John Webster

On the fifth night of this solitude, she falls asleep with a candle burning and dreams herself a mermaid with a thick and golden tail, a crown of shimmering conch shells, then awakens with a start. Whether the ship hit something or something hit the ship, another change has come. The ship is dying; she can feel it slipping away. She waits beneath the blanket for icy water to greet her. But instead of the sea, it's a bear that opens the door.

A great white bear up on its hind legs steps across the threshold.

'Good morning,' he says, and reaches out a paw. — Danielle Dutton

How strange it was, to be grateful to be welcomed in a place no human even knew existed.
How strange it was, to be so suddenly alone, so estranged from the world, she no longer belonged anywhere at all.
How strange it was to hold a man's hand who had, just a few moments earlier, been wielding a sword as some fantastical creature, the stuff of legend come to life.
How strange it was, to look up at this half-man, half-wolf, and feel things she never had before, things that scared her more deeply than wolves or even the threat of capture or death.
How strange it all was.
How strange indeed. — Selena Kitt

The most successful scientist thinks like a poet - wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical - and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees. — Edward O. Wilson

Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look on the effect of your religions, those movements that have swept up millions with their fantastical
claims. Look at what they have done to human history. Look at the wars fought on account of them; look at
the persecutions, the massacres. Look at the pure enslavement of reason; look at the price of faith and zeal. — Anne Rice

I grew up loving fantasy, adventure, and children's book series. At the time, I was in a place in LA where I wasn't working and I kind of thought to myself, "What do I really want to do? Like, what kind of role would be really exciting for me?" And I sort of thought about being in an adventurous, magical, fantastical world and a character that was powerful and sophisticated and perhaps even a dandy, that might have even passed in my head, and then I got an audition for the show [Magicians]shortly after. — Hale Appleman

Because of what I experienced when I was a kid, I want kids to have that kind of an epiphany moment, that little jolt, that little spark that they see when Dusty ['Planes'] flies higher than he has before. That scene where he flies straight up, and he's starting to get dizzy, and then finally it comes together. We forget as adults. We get jaded and we think that's kids' stuff, but for a kid who doesn't know about anything technical or how a movie is made, they're just going to see this and hear this beautiful score and see this dynamic, fantastical thing happening in front of them. — Dane Cook

I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that. — Gene Wilder

There is no passion, more spectral or fantastical than hate, not even its opposite, love, so peoples air, with phantoms, as this madness of the heart. — Lord Byron

My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them. And Bruce Lee was amazing. — Jason Scott Lee

I have heard the most fantastical gossip about myself and each time I thought, "If only my life were that exciting, fun, outrageous, and sexy". Then again my memory wasn't so sharp when I took drugs. Some of what was said about me might be true. At worst it gave me jerk-off material. — Aiden Shaw

In America everything is fantastical. — Alejo Carpentier

For a writer, and particularly a writer of my genre, which is the fantastical, I think that it's to my advantage to feel remote from and disconnected from the world of deal making. — Clive Barker

You never say what I wish you'd say, and you frequently say nothing at all when it's clear you should say something, so it's not entirely fantastical that you'd say a certain thing when you mean something else entirely." He opened his mouth, shut it, and considered the ground briefly before responding. "I remember studying Fleet Admiral Starcrest's Mathematical Probabilities Applied to Military Strategies as a young boy and finding that less confusing than what you just said." Now it was her turn for a stunned pause before answering. "Sicarius?" She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. "Was that a joke?" "A statement of fact. — Lindsay Buroker

Today at the Melchor market, a fantastical sight. A servant girl with a birdcage on her back, full of birds. She wore her blue shawl wrapped around the cage and tied in front to hold it. The willow cage must have been very light because she was not bent over, yet it towered over her head, with turrets like a Japanese pagoda. And full of birds: green and yellow, flapping about like dreams trying to escape from a skull. — Barbara Kingsolver

Actors get to go to these amazing worlds. In 'Terminator,' I was a cyborg with feelings; in 'Avatar,' I lived for 15 months on a fantastical planet, and in 'Clash of the Titans,' I get to fight a scorpion the size of a dump truck. It's a bizarre job, but you explore yourself. — Sam Worthington

I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness. — William Shakespeare

Back then death was invisible for children like me, who went outside, running fearlessly along those fantastical streets, safe from history. The night of the earthquake was the first time I realized that everything could come tumbling down. Now I think it's a good thing to know. It's necessary to remember it every second. — Alejandro Zambra

From the early days of the Raj, Shakespeare had been woven into the fabric of India's education, and my father understood that in a culture rich with storytelling and fantastical tales, Shakespeare's characters and storylines resonated in a powerful way. — Felicity Kendal

Imagine fantasy and pretend as neither fantastical nor pretended ... and then believe it. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Children are more able to objectively synthesize a story involving vampires, monsters, or dragons due to the distance afforded by the fantastical elements than they are a story revolving around horrors committed by human beings. — Joseph Abbruscato

I loved playing with the mix of fantastical inventions and real ones. I hope kids will start logbooks to record their own creations. — Marissa Moss

I can only really speak for myself and what I've noticed in my kids and the people in my life, but because dinosaurs were real, and yet they seem so fantastical, is why they held such a huge fascination for me as a child. They're so different from human beings. — Bryce Dallas Howard

I will always approach life from a small-town vibe. It makes experiences more fantastical, — Landon Liboiron

Ideas of hope are deeply disturbing to a certain kind of presumptive progressive, one who is securely established one way or another ... Another part of the Puritan legacy is the belief that no one should have joy or abundance until everyone does, a belief that's austere at one end, in the deprivation it endorses, and fantastical in the other, since it awaits a universal utopia. Joy sneaks in anyway, abundance cascades forth uninvited ... Joy doesn't betray, but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection. — Rebecca Solnit

This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from bitterness! Don't you see? Children of Satan! Children of God! Is this the only question you bring to me, is this the only power that obsesses you, so that you must make us gods and devils yourself when the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How could you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these emblems of the supernatural? — Anne Rice

It was all still there, an immense quilt of bold, fantastical human will: the faded tawny golds and grays of the descending rooftops and scorched chimney pots, the cold steel-blue river with its fabled Left and Right Banks, the towers and steeples and crooked cobblestone streets, bisected by wide, brutish boulevards. As seductive as a mirage, but every slab of stone, every silent or uproarious inch of it, real. She had not returned triumphant as a brilliant painter or a self-made woman whose only worry about money was how to spend it ... but she had come back to Paris anyway. It was hard to imagine being unhappy here. — Christine Sneed

I had so many offers after 'True Blood' for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball's vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I've always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I've never really had the chance to do that. — Michelle Forbes

That night I followed him whenever he let me. I had to. Followed him into strange, complicated actions, very far, bad and good actions. But I was never allowed into his world. What was I to him? A fantasy. I gave him another identity. Whenever I lay next to him in a bed and it was night, I was too excited to fall asleep, too unwilling to lose a chance that I might be allowed to enter his life. Since he wanted fantasy, what I wanted didn't matter. I asked myself if there was any chance he would change. No. Change for him was fantastical. Yet I was, and still am, a victim of his charity. — Kathy Acker

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending. — Cees Nooteboom

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not. — William Shakespeare

Weird? One day you're normal and the next, you're walking around with a butterfly attached to your back. Then Malice in Wonderland tries to squeeze my head off, and you're calling it weird. This is beyond weird. Crazy, fantastical even, but definitely not weird. — Kimberly Spencer

I have lots of ambitions. I'd love to do theatre. I'd like to be in 'Tea With Mussolini 2;' I'd like to touch Meryl Streep - which would involve being with her in some exotic location. I have lots of fantastical dreams. — Miranda Hart

I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me ... just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not. — Joss Whedon

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy. — Thomas M. Disch

If I learned one thing that day, it was that Peter Bartholomew, Arnulf, even Saint John the Divine had all been wrong. The world did not have to end with ten-horned beasts and dragons, angels and fantastical monsters. The prophets who foretold those things had succumbed to the extravagance of their imaginations, and it had played them false. Nothing on earth could be so terrible as men. — Tom Harper

I love the idea of things being strict and things being uniform. That's the reason why I surround each collection with humor or irony. I want to make sure that it's not too serious and that there is some element that throws it off because otherwise that would make it really boring. There's always a story that's somewhat fantastical. — Thom Browne

So full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical. — William Shakespeare

But the most fantastical of my imaginary worlds turned out to be the one I'd thought was real. As a child, I believed the world was run by competent, sane and benevolent adults. I believed this for much longer than I believed in Santa Claus.
That belief has since gone down like the Titanic (on which I also spent a lot of time as a child). The world is run by nitwits and psychopaths. — Karen Joy Fowler

When you hear the words 'magic' and 'story', they will probably evoke thoughts of your favourite fairy tales from childhood. Storybook pages abound with all manner of magic: fantastical fairies, wish-granting genies, or even a certain boy wizard. — Tony DiTerlizzi

Michael Chabon has long moved easily between the playful, heartfelt realism of novels like 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' and 'Wonder Boys' and his playful, heartfelt, more fantastical novels like 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' and 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.' — Cathleen Schine

Myth is history in a masquerade costume. Peel away the fantastical facade, and you will always find a core of truth." Adrien Morel — Louisa Burton

The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth. — Marina Warner

Even the two novels I've written were based on true stories. It's how I'm wired - real life is fascinating and fantastical enough. The kind of journalism I did unpeeled lids from cans otherwise sealed. — Peter Landesman

The landscape here was strange. It was some type of forest, with giant vines that grew into spirals, round and round, growing up fifty metres toward the sky. They were massive. Some were fifteen metres across, narrowing as they rose. — Stephan Von Clinkerhoffen

I tend to start with a fantastical premise, and then I place it in the world we know. Or, really, it places itself. Honestly, I feel that I have very little control of the magical aspect, as that's just what comes out for me. — Laurie Foos

It was a perfectly normal May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide. The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray mouse," he said laughing rather pityingly. "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared. — Diana Wynne Jones

But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is"
not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America ... — Lafcadio Hearn

I love science fiction when it's well-done. I don't like campy stuff. I don't like stuff that's too fantastical. — Tahmoh Penikett

The fantastical images in my works are descriptive in a different way - a metaphorical way - that removes you from reality. Then, this visually removed point of view allows you to deal with a very heavy subject. — Signe Baumane

A vision of Perry hitting her would flash into her head, and it would seem impossible, fantastical, absurd - even if it had happened the night before - and along with the disbelief would come shame, because she knew it must somehow be her fault, because this was a good, loving famil and she was the outsider ... — Liane Moriarty

I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition. — Joseph Addison

In India, we never distinguished between history and myth. Our Puranas as well as Itihasas contain fantastical tales. They are lies that convey deeper truths. — Ashwin Sanghi

In Mere Christianity, no less than in his more fantastical works, the Narnia stories and science fiction novels, Lewis betrays a deep faith in the power of the human imagination to reveal the truth about our condition and bring us to hope. "The longest way round is the shortest way home"2 is the logic of both fable and of faith. — C.S. Lewis

He is only fantastical that is not in fashion. — Robert A. Burton

Unlike scandal-monger Ed Klein's fantastical No. 1 best-selling narrative about the supposed Blood Feud between the Clintons and the Obamas, Halper's study is juicy and gossipy, yet scrupulously researched, drawing on numerous on-the-record conversations (as well as many not-for-attribution interviews) with prominent Democrats and Clinton insiders, past and present. — Lloyd Grove

There are many films and TV shows I make where people find themselves in fantastical situations; as often as possible, their reactions to it are very normal. — Joss Whedon

Since most of us have only given or received love in a conditioned or partial way, the idea that anyone or anything can be read like an open book may seemforeign or scary - or even fantastical and ridiculous, absurd and fallacious. — Catherine Carrigan

Love is a fiction, a fable, an ode spun by poets and drunks, a fantastical tale told across one thousand and one nights, it is the genie in the bottle, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it's the lie designed to seduce you. — Lauren Blakely

The best sci-fi stories use the fantastical to remind us of the reality of who we are today, the hope of who we may become tomorrow, and the shame of who we were yesterday. — Julio Alexi Genao

As opposed to a movie [Real Steel] where everything feels fantastical, it was really important to me, and I recognise it's not the first movie with robots in it, but that blend of naturalism in performance, writing and design with the futurism of this sport. That was the idea. — Shawn Anthony Levy

I don't know who they are[my characters] . They're entirely invented characters. Maybe that's how I've been able to write so many books, because there are no boundaries for me. I can write a completely fantastical story like "Swept Away" or "Blinded by the Light" and then a non-comic drama like "Chicxulub" or something like "Birnam Wood" that has autobiographical underpinnings. Why not? — T.C. Boyle

Making a fantastical world real is a bit of a challenge, for sure. When you're on set and you have a green screen you're working with where you'll pretend there's a giant lizard chasing you when there's nothing there. Being shown the images of what the creatures were going to look like and then having to react to them realistically without feeling like you're a crazy person. You kind of have to go for it. In order to sell it to the audience, you can't really hold back. — Josh Hutcherson

Probably Verrari," muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he'd seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. "Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari. — Scott Lynch

And please, stay away from those books you devour. They are putting the most fantastical tales into your head. — Libba Bray

As events developed, the debate about jobs and energy extraction in general became more divisive. Those at one extreme embraced the industry as an expression of old-fashioned free enterprise. It offered work that built character and brought deserving rewards for those with initiative, whether they be roughnecks working twelve-hour shifts, investors staking their capital, or researchers staking their reputation on the next big discovery. At the other end of the spectrum were those who saw the industry as a relic of grandfather clauses and cronyism that dated to a period of predatory exploitation, when fantastical deals were pitched by door-to-door peddlers, manufacturing waste was buried in lagoons on private property, and unions were nonexistent. The middle ground was occupied by an untold number of consumers used to cheap plentiful energy, and property owners, who had their worries but also were able to calculate how much a mineral rights lease might be worth. — Tom Wilber

When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas. — Geoffrey Rush

Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig
and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. — William Shakespeare

I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit. — John Green

I get a lot of inspiration from Japanese manga, especially shoujo which tends to have elaborate and fantastical adventure plots. — Cassandra Clare

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things. — Neil Gaiman

So why not live with the magic? Be a kid again and believe in the fantastical. Life is more fun with a little smoke and mirrors. — L. H. Cosway

The biggest misconception usually is to assume that I am a scientist and that I work for scientists. I work for the public to access the surreal and fantastical in science. — Nelly Ben Hayoun

I don't know if I'll get a happy ending. But why worry about a happy ending? Why worry about any ending at all? I don't know where I'm going next, and for the first time in forever, I don't want to. I want my life to be picaresque. Fantastical. I want to say yes and. — Samantha Ellis

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical. — Mark Mothersbaugh

The idea of forming people out of grammatical clauses seems so fantastical at the start that you hide your terror in a smokescreen of elaborate sentence making, as if character can be drawn forcibly out of the curlicues of certain adjectives piled ruthlessly on top of one another. In fact, character occurs with the lightest of brushstrokes. Naturally, it can be destroyed lightly too. — Zadie Smith

I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical. — Bruce Chatwin

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical. — John Donne

A book had always been a door to another world ... a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.
And that love could fill the real world with magic. — Lisa Kleypas

I believe it is no wrong Observation, that Persons of Genius, and those who are most capable of Art, are always fond of Nature, as such are chiefly sensible, that all Art consists in the Imitation and Study of Nature. On the contrary, People of the common Level of Understanding are principally delighted with the Little Niceties and Fantastical Operations of Art, and constantly think that finest which is least Natural. — Alexander Pope

She had spent years locked in a tower, unable to see anything of the world but the scarp of forest beyond her window, but stories had provided her escape. New books, old books, dramas and histories and fantastical adventures, stories of ordinary lives, stories of dragons and demons, murders and mysteries and myths from long ago. A hundred possible worlds, more true to her than her own, more compelling than a life of staring at the same walls and same trees, waiting for the day when the lock would click and she would finally be allowed to be free. A story could not hurt her. — Rhiannon Thomas

In life, you will hear many fantastical and astounding things, what is important is sorting out the fact from the fiction. — T.B. Christensen

What shall I do with this absurdity- O heart, O troubled heart-this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible. — William Butler Yeats

To pick out the wildest and most fantastical odd man alive, and to place your kindness there, is an act so brave and daring as will show the greatness of your spirit and distinguish you in love, as you are in all things else, from womankind. — John Wilmot

Grief is fantastical, and loves the dead, And the apparel of the grave. — Lord Byron

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told. — Jane Yolen

Charles Laughton, who's a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio. — Brian Cox

Chuse thy Cloaths by thine own Eyes, not another's. The more plain and simple they are, the better. Neither unshapely, nor fantastical; and for Use and Decency, and not for Pride. 75. If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton. — Various

I sometimes find reality far more fantastical and unlikely than what I could just make up. — J. Michael Straczynski

The more you can create a structure by which people live in a fantastical situation and by which they will act, and the more you lay that out for the audience, the more they will feel at home in it. — Joss Whedon

For now that it was gone, it all seemed Far stranger: more fantastical than Pharaoh. And he was changed: a foreigner among them. — Seamus Heaney

Old Americana vintage gangster stuff has a fantastical feel; it feels less dirty in a way. It feels like the opera of crime. — Shia Labeouf

Sometimes life is fantastical, and other times you have to find fantastic inside of the boring parts and yes, even the pain. — Marilyn Grey

In 'Beowulf,' director Robert Zemeckis uses a technique called 'motion capture' to conjure fantastical things, angles into action and sweeping vistas to stun your eyes and take your breath away. But what he hasn't mastered and what the technique can't do is this: emotion capture. — Stephen Hunter

JAQUES (10) I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these, but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. My — William Shakespeare

I'm always sort of looking for projects that I can sort of put out into the world, into the public sphere, and to somehow cause an effect. I want to be able to create projects that sort of are going to make people think and think in this sort of magical, sort of fantastical way. — Nick Cave