"By this axe I rule!"
— Robert E. Howard

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

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

"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. "
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

"I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.'"
— Richard Brautigan

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."
— H.P. Lovecraft (The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Weird Stories)

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"For you see, the headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."
— Roger Zelazny

"Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. "
— Mike Judge

"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth."
— Philip José Farmer

"These people who expect to be saints in heaven, though they were not on Earth, have ignored the wisdom of the founders of the great religions. This wisdom is that the kingdom of heaven is within you and that you do not go to heaven unless you are already in it. The magic must be wrought by you and you alone. God has no fairy wand to tap the pig and turn it into a swan.

People ignore this. And those who believe in sinners burning in hell are, perhaps, not so much concerned with going to heaven as with being sure that sinners-–others-–roast forever in the flames."
— Philip José Farmer

"Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates."
— Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job)

"Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car."
— Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings)

"Oh, I get it," I said. "It's a parable. Cute. Let's go eat."
— Christopher Moore (Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal)

"I've seen more intelligence in the crotch lice of harem whores."
— Christopher Moore (Practical Demonkeeping)

"A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Summer Moonshine)

"I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". "
— P.G. Wodehouse

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
— Douglas Adams

"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)

"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face."
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

""Step up to red alert."
"Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb."
- Rimmer & Kryten, "Red Dwarf" "
— Rob Grant

"'Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never would.'"
— Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it."
— Terry Pratchett

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
— G.K. Chesterton

"There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
— G.K. Chesterton (The Napoleon of Notting Hill)

"Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously! I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a nightmare to lead me to a lobster. It is commonly the other way."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Only poor men get hanged."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
— G.K. Chesterton (Alarms and Discursions)

"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)

"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I'll come in again..."
— Graham Chapman

"This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot."
— Graham Chapman

"Tis but a scratch!"

"A scratch? Your arm's off!"

"No it isn't."

"Then what's that?"

"Oh come on, pansy!"
— Graham Chapman (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

""That's no moon, it's a space station.""
— George Lucas

"Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse."
— P.G. Wodehouse

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."
— Stephen King

"Go then, there are other worlds than these."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
— James Branch Cabell

"Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)