Annabel Fielding

“It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“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

“There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“There were two sisters, they went playing,

        To see their father’s ships come sailing …

        And when they came unto the sea-brim

        The elder did push the younger in
Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,

        ’Til her corpse came to the miller’s dam

        “But what did he do with her breastbone?

        He made him a viol to play on.

        What’d he do with her fingers so small?

        He made pegs to his viol withall

And what did he do with her nose-ridge?

        Unto his viol he made a bridge.

        What did he do with her veins so blue?

        He made strings to his viol thereto

What did he do with her eyes so bright?

        On his viol he set at first light.

        What did he do with her tongue so rough?

        ’Twas the new till and it spoke enough

        “Then bespake the treble string,

        ‘O yonder is my father the king.’

Then bespake the second string,

        ‘O yonder sits my mother the queen.’ 

Then bespake the strings all three,

        ‘Yonder is my sister that drowned me.’ ”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury