"You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies.
"
— Mr. Fantastic Fiction (by Libba Bray)

"I'm just running through this list of potential nannies and wondered if we should go for a superhero this time. Do you think Wolverine would be interested? He seems to be on every other team right now..."
— Mark Millar

"When we are no longer children we are already dead"
— Constantin Brancusi

"An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge… It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)

"Once you go dead, there's no better in bed..."
— Jeaniene Frost (One Foot in the Grave)

"Children seem to need, then, a delicate balance between the realistic and the fantastic in their art; enough of the realistic to know that the story matters, enough of the fantastic to make what matters wonderful"
— Eric S. Rabkin (Fantastic Worlds: Myths, Tales, and Stories)

"Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)

"A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law."
— H.P. Lovecraft

"...for he had acquired, as time went on, the firm conviction that any thought, even the most audacious, that any fiction, even the most insane, can one day materialize and see its fulfillment in space and time."
— Stefan Grabiński (The Dark Domain)

"Let us depart instead for the fields of Dreams and wander those blue, romantic hills where stands the abandoned tower of the Supernatural, where cool mosses clothe the ruins of Idealism. Let us, in short, indulge in a little fantasy!"
— Eça de Queirós (The Mandarin and Other Stories by Eca De Queiroz)

"The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)

"In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
"
— Arthur Rimbaud

"Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.
"
— Robert Musil

"The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is the phenomena of the library."
— Michel Foucault

"We have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils."
— Arthur Machen (The Terror)

"It's perfectly natural...and it totally beats abstinence hands down."
— Jean Johnson

"Come! our world is done:
For all the witchery of the world is fled,
And lost all wanton wisdom long since won.
"
— Lionel Johnson

"Do you wanna come with me? 'Cause if you do then I should warn you, you're gonna see all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past. Aliens from the future. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame. It won't be quiet, it won't be safe, and it won't be calm. But I'll tell you what it will be: The trip of a lifetime!"
— Doctor Who

"But if what interests you are stories of the fantastic, I must warn you that this kind of story demands more art and judgment than is ordinarily imagined.
"
— Charles Nodier

"(Uncle) would remark that it was impossible to get by without such a (portentous and whimsical) tone when speaking of many things of this world, and especially of the things not entirely of this world."
— Vladimir Odoevsky