The New Voices of Fantasy Quotes

“The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you. Or perhaps the moral is that brides never fare well in stories, and one should avoid either being a bride, or being in a story. After all, stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, The New Voices of Fantasy

“I hate selkie stories. They're always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat and brought it downstairs between finger and thumb and said "What's this?", and you never saw your mom again.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy

“What magical thing could you want so badly that they take you away from the known world for wanting it?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, The New Voices of Fantasy

“She has learned to suppress her flight instincts, to put on a sickle-cell smile when asked the tickbox questions she gets every year.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy

“As the Empire wades into the East River hand in hand with the Chrysler, other love-struck structures begin to talk. We’re watching from the windows as apartment towers lean in to gossip, stretching laundry lines finger to finger. Grand Central, as stout and elegant as a survivor of the Titanic, stands up, shakes her skirts, and pays a visit to Pennsylvania Station, that Beaux-Arts bangle. The Flatiron and Cleopatra’s Needle shiver with sudden proximity, and within moments they’re all over one another.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy

“As my date—Harvey? Harvard?—brags about his alma mater and Manhattan penthouse, I take a bite of overpriced kale and watch his ugly thoughts swirl overhead.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy

“He is not a bad man, and that, I realize suddenly, is the root of my hurt. He is not a bad man at all. And yet—”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy