"How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on."
— Tanith Lee (Delirium's Mistress: A Novel of the Flat Earth)

"Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root."
— Tanith Lee (Delirium's Mistress: A Novel of the Flat Earth)

"Vimes felt his hand begin to move of its own accord--
And stopped. Red rage froze.
There was The Beast, all around him. And that's all it was. A beast. Useful, but still a beast. You could hold it on a chain, and make it dance, and juggle balls. It didn't think. It was dumb. What you were, what you were, was not The Beast."
— Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)

"Don't imagine she trembles over the dissecting table either, Smith. She has nerves of ice. Real Good can be as ruthless as Evil when it wants to accomplish something, let me tell you."
— Kage Baker (The Anvil of the World)

""YOU! You're boring! You're not even good enough for a good insult! You're in the one place Where magic is always real! Part the seas if you want! Rain down ink and blood! Transform! Fly! You're not allowed to spend the rest of your life panicking! You've got to give something back if you want to get out of here!"
"What? What?? What do I give?"
"You've got stories in there, I know, I can smell 'em--"
"Stoppit, stoppit! I don't! I can't tell a story to save my life!"

"Funny you should put it that way.""
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 05: Dream Sequence)

"The force of your gaze has a weight. Even sunlight resting on the ground weighs something. Your attention presses against its object, your eye projects it like a headlight.
There's a flip side to it. Learn to go down inside yourself, dim the force of your presence. People's eyes will skate right over you.
They'll see you; they just won'tnotice you.
This works even if they're looking for you."
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 03: King of the Cats)

"They wept no animal's tears. They mourned in a great wickerwork of hard muscle and ragged breath. The hot smell of their coats, their black lips pulled back over ivory teeth, stiff sprays of white whiskers; their heavy hair plaited with silver and faience. Their thick hides shivered, as cattle will shiver away flies.
I sweated and tried not to clear my throat."
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 03: King of the Cats)

"'The progression of minor keys...they're meant to represent imperfection..."
"I understand. But that is a philosophical conceit. All artists strive toward perfection or else lack fire."
"Imperfections make the gods draw near. They crave to fix things. Same way some people leap in to finish other people's sentences. God loves nothing better than to break perfect things.'"
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 06: Mystery Date)

"Magic. I want magic. I want magic that works.
THere is no doctor that can make the creature back into my daddy. No therapy that can make him into what he should have been.
No going back to the beginning and rewriting. He is what he is and if I have to write what I know, I'm doomed, because I can never write about this, never."
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 04: Talisman)

"Excuse me.
Nine hours ago, I broke off the single most pointlessly agonizing one-way relationship of my young life.
It was a thin slice of hell, and now it is over.. He's not mine. He never will be mine, and I've thrown away three years of my life pining and hoping. Well, not anymore, and I need to get him out of my system. I've given the matter serious thought, and all I want right now is for some total stranger to nail me to a mattress for the next fourteen hours. I will almost certainly cry all over you and call you by his name, but I assure you that my sexual frustration has built to such a fever peak that I will fuck you dry. What do you say?"
"whine"
— Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Vol. 06: Mystery Date)

"I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (Shards of Honour)

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign)