Jennifer > Jennifer's Quotes

“A wielder of words is a wielder of power.”
― Dyrk Ashton, Paternus

“When the child asks: "Why have the leaves turned red?" or "Why does it snow?" we launch into explanations which have no obvious connection with the question. Leaves are red because it is cold, we say. What has cold to do with colour? How is the child to know that we are talking of abstract connections between atmospheric conditions and leaf chemistry? And why should he care? The child has asked 'why,' not 'how,' and certainly not 'how much.' And why should he care the molecular structure of water is believed to be such that at low temperatures it forms rigid bonds which make it appear as ice or snow? None of these abstractions says anything about what the child experiences: the redness of leaves and the cool, tickling envelopment by snow. The living response would be quite different.

'Why are the leaves red Dad?"
"Because it is so beautiful, child. Don't you see how beautiful it is, all these autumn colours?"

There is no truer answer. That is how the leaves are red. An answer which does not invoke questions, which does not lead the child into an endless series of questions, to which each answer is a threshold. The child will hear later on that a chemical reaction occurs in those leaves. It is bad enough, then; let us not make the world uninhabitable for the child too soon.”
― Neil Evernden, The Natural Alien

“There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king's will be perform'd!”
― william shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

“The old man with the white beard had gone quite mad. He ripped his robes from his body and ran naked through the forest glade. He was babbling and shouting at the sky. His words were nothing but meaningless sounds — guttural grunts and lunatic ravings. His eyes were wild and his white beard and white hair were tangled with twigs and leaves. He foamed and spit and waved his oaken staff around like a club. He tried to grab squirrels and eat them raw. He rolled around in the dirt and swallowed small stones.”
― Jennifer M. Baldwin, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain

“If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“There are no gods, paladin. There is no afterlife, no eternal reward. You, in fact, are a slave to a creature you cannot even comprehend.” Demian stabbed the stick he still held into the ground. “All that a man has in this world is his own will, the freedom to do what he desires. Taking away that is the greatest crime one can inflict upon another. Murder – it is terrible. But it is over in an instant and the dead never can truly understand what has happened to them. They are simply gone. But slavery – day after day, year after year shackled to another’s whims – it is the most heinous of crimes.”
― Alec Hutson, The Crimson Queen

“All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.”
― Gene Wolfe

“They think written words are even more powerful,’ whispered the toad. ‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“Lady finger,
dipped in moonlight,
writing what for
across the morning sky.”
― Jerry Garcia

“The street-crowd below held no one of interest. They bored me. They bored God. Surely they bored themselves. The beggars were dull, the passerby grey, the lounging riffraff leaned bereft of lazy charm. If any possessed magic, they kept it hidden. If they thirsted for miracles, they settled for drinking brown fog flavored with smoke, with a chaser of dust and horse-shit. Every tenth breath spitting it to the cobbles with a wet "splat".”
― Raymond St. Elmo, The Harlequin Tartan