"Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light. "
— Leonard S. Marcus (The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy)

"Upon the hearth the fire is red
Beneath the roof there is a bed
But not yet weary are our feet
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone
Tree and flower and leaf and grass
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky
Pass them by! Pass them by!

"Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gait
And though we pass them by today
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the moon or to the sun
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell
Fare you well! Fare you well!

"Home is behind the world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Then world behind and home ahead
We’ll wander back to home and bed
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp and meat and bread
And then to bed! And then to bed!

"Still round the corner there may wait
A hidden road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
There may come a time at last that I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
East of the moon west of the sun."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back."
— C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold)

"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."
— Francis Of Assisi

"Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all."
— Jane Austen

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"We are ready to turn and twist the facts until they bear no resemblance to the original thing."
— C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis - Box Set)

"My father, whom I implicitly believed, represented adult life as one of incessant drudgery under the continual threat of financial ruin."
— C.S. Lewis (Surprised By Joy)

"I object to that remark very strongly!
- The Magician's Nephew"
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)

"There's nothing like a mission to save the world to liven up a vacation."
— Donita K. Paul, DragonQuest

"’You do not yet look as happy as I mean you to be.’
Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’
‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is over: this is the morning.’
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."
— C.S. Lewis (The Last Battle)

"'More like the real thing,' said the lord Digory softly.
- The Last Battle"
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)

"Do not dare not to dare."
— C.S. Lewis (O Cavalo e o Seu Rapaz)

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader")

"'Am I to understand,' said Reepicheep to Lucy after a long stare at Eustace, 'That this singularly discourteous person is under your Majesty's protection? Because, if not--"
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader")

"I see you are an idiot, whatever else you may be..."
— C.S. Lewis

"...Feeling like the voice she liked best in all the world was calling her name."
— C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

"She looked at a silver birch: it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty, old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his fact and hands, with hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah! --she would be the best of all. She would be a gracious goddess, smooth and stately, the Lady of the Wood."
— C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)

"Oh Trees, Trees, Trees...wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and hamadryads, come out, come [out] to me."
— C.S. Lewis

"This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine."
— Susanna Clarke

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."
— C.S. Lewis

"Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkheart)

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— George Santayana

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"People think six is a great many, when it's children. ...they don't mind six pairs of boots, or six pounds of apples, or six oranges, especially in equations, but they seem to think that you ought not to have five brothers and sisters."
— E. Nesbit, The Treasure Seekers

"This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, 'thus the sad days passed slowly by'--or 'the years rolled on their weary course'--or 'time went on'--because it is silly; of course time goes on--whether you say so or not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts--and in between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and went to bed, and dull things like that."
— Edith Nesbit (The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Complete and Unabridged)

"Tears unnumbered ye shall shed...."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it."
— Henry Ford

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men afraid of the light"
— Plato

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
— Mark Twain

"[Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self -will that we have been training ourselves into... It means killing part of yourself, under-going a kind of death."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous."
— C.S. Lewis

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
— G.K. Chesterton

"...Badness is only spoiled goodness."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"It was true, she thought, that the big things awe us but the little things touch us."
— Bess Streeter Aldrich

"For though love has been ridiculed and disgraced, exchanged and bartered, dragged through the courts, and sold for thirty pieces of silver the bright steady glow of its fire still shines. "
— Bess Streeter Aldrich

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
— Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Poems of Arthur O'Shaughnessy)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."
— Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Every once in a while you just have to decide to do something very crazy and very right--just to dare yourself to live. I don't mean doing something stupid and destructive--just something fun and good and beautiful"
— Regina Doman (The Shadow Of The Bear)

""How do you say 'bring me sausage and eggs or I'll slit your throat' in Italian?"
"Look it up in the phrase book." "
— Regina Doman (Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold)

"Together, let us visit Jesus Crucified. Let us look at Him; He is lifted up on the Cross. If Jesus is nailed there, let us not complain if we must stand at His feet."
— St. Gemma Galgani

"Let us run to Jesus, Heart of Love, Heart full of tenderness. Let us ask Jesus to give us the riches of His pure love-to breathe only for love, to live only for love."
— St. Gemma Galgani

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent"
— Victor Hugo

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
— G.K. Chesterton