Fanciful Fantastical Fiction Quotes

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

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

I've always agreed with the view that - with science fiction - its predictive powers were the least important or least relevant aspect of its public profile. I always loved stuff like Orwell's 1984, where he explicitly said "It's 1948, reversed." I liked writers that were doing allegorical, satirical, fantastical versions of everyday life. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel we're publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller's Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities - her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans - and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue. ~ Deborah Smith

Before starting work on this book, we had to ask ourselves a question what is science fiction? Seemingly simple, but in reality the answer was hard to formulate. This is the definition we settled upon:
Science fiction is a member of a group of fictional genres whose narrative drive depends upon events, technologies, societies, etc. that are impossible, unreal, or that are depicted as occurring at some time in the future, the past or in a world of secondary creation. These attributes vary widely in terms of actuality, likelihood, possibility and in the intent with which they are employed by the creator. The fundamental difference between science fiction and the other "fantastical genres" of fantasy and horror is this: the basis for the fiction is one of rationality. The sciences this rationality generates can be speculative, largely erroneous, or even impossible, but explanations are, nevertheless, generated through a materialistic worldview. The supernatural is not invoked. ~ Stephen Baxter

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

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

Yoel Goldenberg makes exhibitions, photographs, models and media craftsmanship. His works are an examination of ideas, for example, validness and objectivity by utilizing an exhaustive methodology and semi exploratory exactness and by referencing documentaries, 'actuality fiction' and prominent experimental reciprocals. Yoel Goldenberg as of now lives and works in Brooklyn.

By challenging the division between the domain of memory and the domain of experience, Goldenberg formalizes the circumstantial and underlines the procedure of synthesis that is behind the apparently arbitrary works. The manners of thinking, which are probably private, profoundly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream universes, are much of the time uncovered as collections. His practice gives a valuable arrangement of metaphorical instruments for moving with a pseudo-moderate approach in the realm of execution: these fastidiously arranged works reverberate and resound with pictures winnowed from the fantastical domain of creative energy. By trying different things with aleatoric procedures, Yoel Goldenberg makes work in which an interest with the clarity of substance and an uncompromising demeanor towards calculated and insignificant workmanship can be found. The work is detached and deliberate and a cool and unbiased symbolism is utilized.

His works are highlighting unplanned, unintentional and sudden associations which make it conceivable to overhaul craftsmanship ~ Herbert Goldenberg

Jeff VanderMeer's fiction has always been entrancingly, engagingly, enthusiastically weird, a winning combination of mimesis and the fantastical that privileges neither component: perhaps the very definition of that mode categorized as the 'New Weird' and exemplified most famously by the groundbreaking work of China Mieville. ~ Paul Di Filippo

As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I've always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.

The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life's evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin

Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language. ~ Alice McDermott

When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

My looks are other peoples' problem because I don't have to look at myself. ~ Gerry Burnie

Therm-bombs! Drop 'em right on us! I been roasted before - it's nothing! ~ Henry V. O'Neil

A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else. ~ Bette Lee Crosby

How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction? ~ Wallace Stegner

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones. ~ Libba Bray

If you don't read books, and if you don't get consumed by the physical and moral life of men and women in fiction and history, too many facets of yourself may never come into being. ~ David Denby

I wrote 'The Match,' my cricket novel, between 2002 and 2005. In retrospect, almost an age of innocence in cricket and a time when it was rare to find the game deep in fiction. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

Christ nailed all my guilt to the cross. Sometimes, though, I needed a reminder that the nails held. ~ Ruth Buchanan

He walks out the door making eye contact with me for only a second. It was at that moment that he lured me in. I was captivated by him and, for the first time, I understood his power. Nicholas Jayzon commanded attention when he walked into a room. ~ Jennifer Loren

If you're going to blame your hard times for all the things that are wrong in your life, you better also blame them for the good stuff too!"

Rachel Hollis, Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be ~ Rachel Hollis

Once the two of you come together, even the devil himself will be running for cover.
- The Duke of Traherne ~ Diana Quincy

Even if the past exists as an independent reality outside the minds of those who write about it, we can never know that reality. Historians and writers of historical fiction attempt to fill in the gaps, to say: 'This is how it might have been.' ~ John Zanetti

It's not the bloody carrots that upset me. It's having them sneaked into my food by a madwoman who addresses the cutlery as Mr and Mrs Fork. ~ Jojo Moyes

Writing is a bittersweet addiction. The more it drains you; the more replenished you feel, and you crave it even more. ~ Anthea Syrokou

Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth. ~ Salman Rushdie

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality. ~ Tom Clancy

I've just finished reading 'The Second Plane,' and I think it's some of the best non-fiction I've ever read. ~ M. J. Hyland

I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long. ~ Erica Sehyun Song

When life disappoints, one must apply one's will, not crumple. ~ Orna Ross

So is this being in love? I stay with the moment, waiting to find out, the space between us fluctuating with uncertainty. The only thing I am sure of is that each time his lips leave mine they are right back again. ~ Kea Alwang

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story. ~ David Ignatius

History is an agreed-upon fiction. ~ Diane Ackerman

Flammflorbs, archypodsplays, clinker crabs, dorsaldorydabbs, mingslakks, linglimes, occocobbers, firgengobblers, smitesnides, orkusta shelled bunkbarnacles, balootabinks, jorgentua jellyfish, tungol widders, teleosti chimaras, and things stranger, yet to be named, Klubbe and his crew members observed through their portholes, lit by the lamps of their submarine's lanterns. ~ Philip Dodd

She couldn't let the fear of reliving past disappointments keep her from the chance of discovering a joy she'd never known. ~ Melissa Jagears

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery. ~ John Pipkin

Man, that's a killer strategy, that is, an awesome way to persuade the incognoscenti that we're not crazed hokum junkies, high on hackwork, trying to pimp our addled euphoria to anyone who passes. Yeah, vehement denial that we've got anything to do with the crack-whore pump-daddy beast of a thousand cocks locked in the closet. Bitter accusations of snootcocking snipewankery when they point out that crack-whore pimp-daddy beast of a thousand cocks in the closet. Offended outrage when they assume the mindfuck we're touting is a cheap handjob, just because we're, like, standing on a street corner dressed to sell our arses. And because our first words to a prospective customer just happens to be, 'Hey, big boy. ~ Hal Duncan

The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time. ~ Chad Harbach

To serves the Etkaberrohn Queen in her quests to forget her brokenary hearts... ~ Trevor Alan Foris

A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths. ~ Wally Lamb

She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself. ~ Dean F. Wilson