Fariha > Fariha's Quotes

“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

“Winter is coming.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead . . . for in imagination, we can create wonders.”
― Chris Wooding, Poison

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them.
Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness.
Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“...demons do tend to cluster around the yellowing pages and cracked spines of second hand books.”
― Graham Joyce, How to Make Friends with Demons

“Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.”
― Greg Bear

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you'd been before life took away your belief in the possible.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“He shouldn't look. He knew that. You should never look into the face of the uncanny, but had he ever been able to turn way? No. He'd courted it, begged for it.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“Some of us are born in the right place, and some of us have to go look for it.”
― Chris Wooding, Poison

“The books were legends and tales, stories from all over the Realm. These she had devoured voraciously – so voraciously, in fact, that she started to become fatigued by them. It was possible to have too much of a good thing, she reflected.
“They’re all the same,” she complained to Fleet one night. “The soldier rescues the maiden and they fall in love. The fool outwits the wicked king. There are always three brothers or sisters, and it’s always the youngest who succeeds after the first two fail. Always be kind to beggars, for they always have a secret; never trust a unicorn. If you answer somebody’s riddle they always either kill themselves or have to do what you say. They’re all the same, and they’re all ridiculous! That isn’t what life is like!”
Fleet had nodded sagely and puffed on his hookah. “Well, of course that’s not what life is like. Except the bit about unicorns – they’ll eat your guts as soon as look at you. those things in there” – he tapped the book she was carrying – “they’re simple stories. Real life is a story, too, only much more complicated. It’s still got a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everyone follows the same rules, you know. . . It’s just that there are more of them. Everyone has chapters and cliffhangers. Everyone has their journey to make. Some go far and wide and come back empty-handed; some don’t go anywhere and their journey makes them richest of all. Some tales have a moral and some don’t make any sense. Some will make you laugh, others make you cry. The world is a library, young Poison, and you’ll never get to read the same book twice.”
― Chris Wooding, Poison

“The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.”
― China Mieville

“Is there laughter in your face yet, Rilla? I hope so. The world will need laughter and courage more than ever in the years that will come next. I don't want to preach—this isn't any time for it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

“I didn't really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in Rainbow Valley.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

“The long, green, seaward-looking glen was filled with
dusk, and beyond it were meadows of sunset. The harbour was radiant, purple here, azure there, opal elsewhere. The maple grove was beginning to be misty green. Rilla looked about her with wistful eyes. Who said that spring was the joy of the year? It was the heart-break of the year. And the pale-purply mornings and the daffodil stars and the wind in the old pine were so many separate pangs of the heart-break. Would life ever be free from dread again?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

“In the end, it was four words that changed the course of our lives and the history of the world. Perhaps it wasn’t really so surprising. They were, after all, the most important words in any language.
‘What are you reading?”
― H.G. Parry, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door

“I want to be totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.”
― Anita Brookner, Providence

“Kitty had frequently felt that she lacked some essential feminine quality, that this resided in the folklore passed on by women who possessed a knowledge that she was forced to supplement by reading books.”
― Anita Brookner, Providence