"Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. "
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"But I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished. "
— Peter S. Beagle

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."
— Harlan Ellison

"I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.
-- From the title story "Paingod"
— Harlan Ellison (Paingod and Other Delusions)

"be careful of monsters with teeth"
— Harlan Ellison

"Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment."
— Harlan Ellison

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world"
— Philip Pullman

"she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Windy Poplars)

"Tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself.
Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting."
— L.M. Montgomery

"Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"Strange children should smile at each other and say, "Let's play.""
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night)

"Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world."
— Jasper Fforde (First Among Sequels)

"Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time."
— Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)

"If real life were a book, it would never find a publisher."
— Jasper Fforde

"That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did."
— Max Barry (Company)

"Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone."
— Dorothy Parker

"What fresh hell is this?"
— Dorothy Parker (The Portable Dorothy Parker)

"The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue."
— Dorothy Parker

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

"Don't Panic"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."
— Philip Pullman

"Was there only one world after all which spent its time dreaming of others?"
— Philip Pullman

"Science is the only religion of mankind."
— Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End)