"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth."
— George R.R. Martin

"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith."
— R.A. Salvatore (Streams of Silver)

"Without trust, there can be no genuine peace. Neither in politics, nor in the quiet individuality of the heart and spirit."
— Timothy Zahn (Vision of the Future)

"I love you like a fat kid loves cake!"
— Scott Adams

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
— Scott Adams

"You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I'm not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway."
— Scott Adams

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? "
— Scott Adams

"Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt."
— Scott Adams

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
— Thomas Jefferson

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "
— Thomas Jefferson

"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."
— Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations)

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."
— Edwin Hubble

"And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere 'modernity' cannot kill."
— Bram Stoker (Dracula)

"We learn from failure, not from success!"
— Bram Stoker (Dracula)

"There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope."
— Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)

"One's work may be finished someday, but one's education never."
— Alexandre Dumas

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

"My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
— Malcolm X

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
— Malcolm X

""I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.""
— Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)

"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)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

"Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you"
— Orson Scott Card (Sarah: Women of Genesis)

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."
— John Adams

"Thanks to God that he gave me stubborness when I know I am right."
— John Adams

"We do not inherit this land from our ancenstors, we borrow it from our children."
— Haida Indian saying

"The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."
— John F. Kennedy

"One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government."
— Ron Paul

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
— Albert Einstein

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
— Edward R. Murrow

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right."
— Henry Ford

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman

"Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind."
— Matthew Prior (The poetical works of Matthew Prior)

"Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God."
— Joseph Smith Jr.

"Love hurts, but not like a bear attack."
— Jay Schadler

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
— George Bernard Shaw

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
— Isaac Asimov

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'"
— Isaac Asimov

"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
— Graham Chapman (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

"Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)

"We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)