Quotes by Editors

Fannie Mae had aroused his anger, then reduced his anger to verbal breast-beating, and finally to silent hurt. Still, the love remained. Why?
Frank Herbert
History is finite-there's only so much you can learn about a six square block historic district in New York City. (Dark City Lights)
Kat Georges
Vulnerability has a strength of its own.
William Zinsser
They say that secrets live at the bottom of a wine bottle. Mama had made it there the night before, slow glass by slow glass, but she'd never spoken a word.
Alethea Kontis
But always, at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts, she would drop in that accusation.
Ford Madox Ford
Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.
Frank Harris
Cine n-ar dori să moară visând că moare?
Saşa Pană
For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.
Frank Herbert
When he turned and walked into the living room he knew instantly why it was that he hadn’t wanted to come here, and that he ought to get out as soon as he possibly could. There, staring him in the face, was everything he’d been deprived of for the last five years.
William Maxwell
A man should be taller, older, heavier, uglier, and hoarser than his wife.
E.W. Howe
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Peter De Vries
When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach.
Rob Bignell
She could sense it very clearly: for me, no less than for her, the past counted far more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it. Compared to memory, every possession can only ever seem disappointing, banal, inadequate ... She understood me so well! My anxiety that the present 'immediately' turned into the past so that I could love it and dream about it at leisure was just like hers, was identical. It was 'our' vice, this: to go forwards with our heads forever turned back.
Giorgio Bassani
It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts of books. But they got used up.
Holly Black
The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people's religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an 'intelligent creator' should be held accountable for their folly; they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools. Religiously inclined writers like Stephen L Carter may plead that 'respect' should be accorded to religious views in public discourse, but he neglects to demonstrate that those views are worthy of respect. All secularists -- scientists, literary figures, even politicians (if there are any such with the requisite courage) -- should speak out on the issue when the opportunity presents itself.
S.T. Joshi
When we wallow in anxiety and doubts, we subject ourselves to fear. When we focus on the greatness of God, we make fear subject to faith.
Katy Kauffman
Q: Do you have any advice for upcoming writers who want to pen weird stories?A: READ, damn it. Fill your brain to the bursting point with the good stuff, starting with writers that you truly enjoy, and then work your way backward and outward, reading those writers who inspired the writers you love best. That was my path as far as Weird/Horror Fiction, starting with Lovecraft, and then working my way backward/outward on the Weird Fiction spiderweb. And don’t limit your reading. Read it all, especially non-fiction and various news outlets. You’d be surprised by how many of my story ideas were born while listening to NPR, perusing a blog, or paging through Vanity Fair.Once you have your fuel squared away, just write what you love, in whatever style and genre. You’ll never have fun being someone you’re not, so be yourself. When a singer opens their mouth, what comes out is what comes out.Also, don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to walk away. Writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s totally fine. One doesn’t need to be a writer to enjoy being a reader and overall fan of genre or wider fiction.
T.E. Grau
When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live.
Rob Bignell
We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth... you willingly bear false witness.
Mark Waid
New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.
Ford Madox Ford
We are not easy to help. Nor are we easy to be around. Nobody with a serious illness is easy to be around. Although not obviously physically disabled, we struggle to get things done. Our energy levels are dangerously low. Sometimes, we find it hard to talk. We get angry and frustrated. We fall into despair. We cry, for no apparent reason. Sometimes we find it difficult to eat, or to sleep. Often, we have to go to bed in the afternoon or all day.So do most people with a serious illness. We are no different.
Sally Brampton
Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.
Holly Black
The FDA just ordered them off the market. The glaze is supposed to be poison—provided you drink at least forty cups of tea out of one of them every day of your life for twenty years.
Frederik Pohl
Good writing just isn't that common.
Eric Flint
Baby," she says in a harsh whisper, "in this world, lots of people will try to grind you down. They need you to be small so they can be big. You let them think whatever they want, but you make sure you get yours. You get yours.
Holly Black
Upon my soul!' Tietjens said to himself, 'that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I've met for years.' A little pronounced in manner sometimes; faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she'd be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides! But positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing; the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you'd go to Sylvia Tietjens in sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal; kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you'd go to Valentine: she's find something to do for it. . . . The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger ... sheath!Perhaps the future of the world then was to women? Why not? He hand't in years met a man that he hadn't to talk down to - as you talk down to a child, as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. Waterhouse ... as he always talked down to Macmaster. All good fellows in their way ...
Ford Madox Ford
Faut être drôlement heureux pour supporter d'être triste, drôlement heureux ou drôlement courageux, et moi je ne suis pas très courageuse, et je suis très très malheureuse.
Justine Lévy
I lay on the bed and shut my eyes, thinking that nobody really likes marriage, that it's a flawed arrangement, that people get enthusiastic and jump in for a hundred reasons and then, after the ceremony, after a few years, the whole deal turns into a concert they wouldn't have dreamed of attending.
Frederick Barthelme
It's important to realize that sometimes the information you need is hidden behind the information available.
Anne Elizabeth Moore
We have a disturbed relationship with our past which religion cannot explain. We are primitive in unexplainable ways, our lives woven of the familiar and the strange, the reasonable and the insane.
Frank Herbert
And that is one of the problems of your generation. All sex. No romance. No love.
Marcy Dermansky
You can’t fathom the alien mind.
Adam Christopher
Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.
Alberto Manguel
All I can tell you about fashion and style is this: buy and wear what makes you happy.
John Jannuzzi
Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression.
Mark Waid
Let us hope...that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.
Peter De Vries
...the Bush administration may, in future years, be remembered 'for bringing peace to the Middle East' (as Condoleezza Rice has pronounced). History may be the mother of truth, but it can also give birth to illegitimate children.
Alberto Manguel
From the floor, I see the tops of the Philadelphia skyline out of her window. Staring at it, I realize that the night sky isn't really black, which is the way I've always thought of it. It's actually a dark shade of blue, the darkest possible.
Siobhan Vivian
To Savor The Scene, A Book, or A Friend.
Barbara Shook Hazen
Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, "He fought so hard." And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong.
Sally Brampton
This is THE most romantic thing that has ever happened to me, and it involves both drugs and a toilet.
Katie Heaney
One moment of incompetence can be fatal.
Frank Herbert
I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm.
Brian Doyle
Have you ever taken a good look at a public garbage can in Paris, a paving stone in Rio de Janeiro, or a doorway in Dublin? Trust me -- the man or woman responsible for making those utilitarian objects was creating art.
Shawn Coyne
I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy.
Holly Black
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
Alberto Manguel
If you are against abortions, don't have one.
Scott Andrews
I will, however, establish that success in love, as in all other aspects of life, belongs, as a rule, to the persistent and fiber man. Chaucer had reason to make the Old Bath confess: 'The truth is, more or less, we always succumb to attention and perseverance'.
Frank Harris
I was taught how to tie up the loin with a butcher's looping knot and was so excited by the discovery that I went home and practiced. I told Elisa about my achievement. “I tied up everything,” I said. “A leg of lamb, some utensils, a chair. My wife came home, and I tied up her too.” Elisa shook her head. “Get a life,” she said and returned to her task.
Bill Buford
Her heart was an invalid convinced that it would not survive many more sunsets.
Alethea Kontis
Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.
Siobhan Vivian
If I could change the attitude of young men toward literature, I would want them to read not just for escape, but because literature can be more truthful about things like sex, commitment, and aging. It can be more truthful about the stuff that our parents lied to us (and themselves) about, and the stuff that everyone has to lie about. It can all be dealt with truthfully in fiction and poetry.
Lorin Stein
Power is always right weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.
Noah Webster
What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?
Frank Herbert
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
Frank Herbert
Some say," Scytale said, "that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is infinite. They feel lonely without a unifying symbol. For a lonely people, the Emperor is a definite place. They can turn toward him and say: 'See, there He is. He makes us one.' Perhaps religion serves the same purpose, m'Lord.
Frank Herbert
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
Frank Herbert
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death - Walt Whitman
Holly Black
The only way to end grief was to go through it.
Holly Black
Who am I, when all I’ve ever believed myself to be, is fading before my very eyes?Am I still me, or just a shadow of what I used to be?Was I just an illusion that lived only in my head?Did I paint myself as something more than I really am?And with all these changes in my life… What will be left of the woman who dreamed her dreams?When all the colors that she wrapped herself with… are slowly being stripped away…Copyright © Eeva Lancaster
Eeva Lancaster