John Clute > Quotes

“Sense of Wonder (...) may be defined as a shift in perspective so that the reader, having been made suddenly aware of the true scale of an event or venue, responds to the revelation with awe.”
― John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

“More interestingly, it could be argued that, if fantasy (and debatably the literature of the fantastic as a whole) has a purpose other than to entertain, it is to show readers how to perceive; an extension of the argument is that fantasy may try to alter readers' perception of reality. Of course, quack religions (etc.) make similar attempts, but a major difference is that, while the latter attempt to convert people to their codified way of thinking, the best fantasy introduces its readers into a playground of rethought perception, where there are no restrictions other than those of the human imagination. In some modes of the fantastic – e.g., magic realism and surrealism – the attempt to alter the reader's perception is overt, but most full-fantasy texts have at their core the urge to change the reader; that is, full fantasy is by definition a subversive literary form.”
― John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

“Each of them is a book through which other books dream. (referring to Nodier's SMARRA and TRILBY)”
― John Clute

“An edifice is more than a house and less than a City, though it may resemble a house from the outside and a city from within. From without, an edifice may seem self-contained and finite; from within, it may well extend beyond lines of vision, both spatially and temporally. In almost every possible way, edifices manifest a principle central to the description of most physical structures in fantasy: there is always more to them than meets the eye.”
― John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy