Rich Horton > Quotes

“if we limited ourselves to good ideas, nothing of any worth would ever be accomplished.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020

“I’d never been in love, because I was waiting for the silent-movie love: big eyes and violins, chattering without sound, pure. Nobody had loved right since 1926.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015

“Anosognosia
by John Crowley”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020

“Rosella screams, a short, high-pitched yelp as the Pedestrian starts tearing at her clothes. It is what he must do, as the Pedestrian, and Rosella must squeal and weep and eventually succumb to the desire his rough hands awaken in her, because deep down every woman hides a dream of being ravished by strange men.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Remember how once, just once, you scored the best dope in the world? Remember how you smoked till your mouth and your throat were all sandpaper and your lungs thought you’d gone down on a fireplace? Remember how you put on your headphones—took three tries, didn’t it?—and cranked Dark Side of the Moon or “The Ride of the Valkyries” or whatever most got you off all the way up to eleven, man? Remember what it was like?”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“You may have heard of the one called Chute, on Mars, who wrote a novel called Waste, a metaphysical detective novel about the nature of life and waste that featured Smeg, the detective.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Art is seeing the truth and revealing it, as beautifully and forcefully and honestly as you are able.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009

“I did not demand that the crows be like me, that their minds resemble my own: I simply cared for them. Why should I base my level of care and concern for them on how much like me they were, rather than loving them for what they were? That I should love only those that resembled myself, and neglect those who lived in other worlds, going about their other lives, seemed absurd to me. Arrogant. I cared for all.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020

“It might not seem like much, but what most people don’t get is that there’s a world of difference between not being cruel and being kind.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2017

“He didn’t sit. He rarely sat. Big hands massaging the back of his chair, he looked as if he was keeping the furniture from jumping off the floor. The smile enjoyed itself for another moment while smart eyes read every face. Then he decided that things weren’t stirred up enough, so with a big voice accustomed to commanding billions of dollars, he told all of us, “I’ll be dead before New Year’s.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“I had three ribs stoved in once in Outremer, so I knew what was going on. I recognised the sound, and the particular sort of pain, and the not quite being able to breathe. Mostly I remember thinking: it won’t hurt, because any moment now I’ll be dead. Bizarrely reassuring, as if I was cheating, getting away with it. Cheating twice; once by staying alive, once by dying. This man is morally bankrupt.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“It’s like spending millions of dollars on shark patrols. In Utah.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Caught-heart, always present, never here, the outlandish and unsatisfying, while always promising satisfaction never-failed-or-fulfilled-quest.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“You think there can be love without suffering? Having without losing?”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Sal didn’t think in Ifs. If led to If only Macey wasn’t sick, and even If only Sal’s bone marrow was a match. If never did anybody any good at all.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009

“Florida is California on a Troma budget. That’s what the demon lover thinks, anyway. Special effects blew the budget on bugs and bad weather.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015

“When I was in Outremer, I got shot in the face with an arrow. Should’ve killed me instantly; but by some miracle it hung up in my cheekbone, and an enemy doctor we’d captured the day before yanked it out with a pair of tongs. You should be dead, they said to me, like I’d deliberately cheated. No moral fibre.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Sometimes sadness teaches lessons that lead to more sadness, but sometimes it can lead to changed behavior. Sometimes happiness cannot figure out how to give itself to others. Sometimes joy can only be lived, a lucky chance that one takes, a risk that says damn the consequences.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018

“Life is a series of moments forever sliding out of your grasp.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“(On Earth, when anthropologists can’t find instant meaning in any cultural artifact, they say “This obviously had deep religious significance.”)”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“I do not bind power, nor do I loose it.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009

“After exploring the Life-Rock for a day (“If you’ve seen one rock, you’ve seen them all”—Oud), his narrative ends two days into the return journey back to Tharsis.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“it’s one thing to follow #alienmusicstories about it and another to be practicing the tricky sax solo for the rachmaninoff and see one slither through your open dorm window and re-form into elvis.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020

“That seemed dangerous. If your internal map of reality doesn’t match external conditions, bad things happen.”
― Rich Horton, Robots: The Recent A.I.

“I would miss him. He always made so little sense.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Beyond the towers of Antigen Bay, the other floating cities of the Moveable Feast mingled in sunset glamor.”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020

“Imulai Mokarengen has four great archives, one for each compass point. The greatest of them is the South Archive, with its windows the color of regret and walls where vines trace out spirals like those of particles in cloud chambers.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“My eyebrows went past my hairline. In fact, I have not located them since. I think they are hiding behind my ears.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2014

“Hand-wringing parents don’t want their precious offspring looking at wieners and hoo-hahs when they’re supposed to be amassing student debt, so they demand that the Termite Mound fix the problem by Doing Something.”
― Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015

“Because the ice cream would be a coup d’état, in one fell swoop staking her social territory, plastering her brand across gossip sites, and launching the battleship of her marriage,”
― Rich Horton, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2020