Speculative Fiction Quotes

“Helen dared to look up without being invited to do so. “I cannot
thank you enough for your kindness, Lady Consort.”
“Kindness had nothing to do with it. You have skills and training I
need just now, and I intend to use you shamelessly, and expose you to
greater danger.”
“Get in line, Lady Consort,” Helen replied. “Danger-filled usury
seems to be a holiday pastime in this city.”
The Consort stopped pretending to do her needlework. “I could
have you whipped for such insolence, girl.”
“Before or after you use me.”
― Candace L. Talmadge, Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal

“Love Has Neither Time Nor Distance”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“Knowledge Is Power and Power Is Dangerous”
― Alexander Morpheigh, The Pythagorean

“Let the spirits guide you, but never let them take you.”
― E.J. Stevens, Spirit Storm

“You’re also only half-human, but you seem to identify completely with humans”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“The only one everlasting love is the unrealized one. The love to this thing that you’d never had. Behind it is hidden the love to your own ego and feelings.”
― Alexandar Tomov, Unexpected Tales from the Ends of the Earth

“And the minibar in my hotel room was mysteriously emptied."
"By arcane forces beyond the understanding of normal human beings?" asked Myfanwy as she sifted through the in-box. It was the sort of question you learned to ask automatically when you worked with the Checquy.
"No, it was me," admitted Shantay without a shred of embarrassment.”
― Daniel O'Malley, The Rook

“Humans are strange. … They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. … it's vanity.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“There were no more nation-states, only a world government.”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“Sci-Fi, Space-Travel, Space-Opera, Chance-Encounters, Adventure-Reads, Speculative-Fiction, Book-Quotes”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“The sky is the limit only for those who aren't afraid to fly!”
― Bob Bello, Sci-fi Almanac, 2010: An Anthology of Short Stories

“Millions cheer the warrior
spilling blood across the ring
while the one who stands for peace
is ridiculed and shamed.
Must hearts forever suffer
from ignorance and greed?
Can bombs heal our souls
or set our spirits free?”
― Aberjhani, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player

“Is there any greater mystery than the separateness of each person?”
― Laura van den Berg, Find Me

“Funny, they made this new genre called Speculative Fiction, I thought all fiction had always been speculative.”
― Teri Louise Kelly

“Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable.

Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow.
And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness.

The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“In the desert there is no sign that says, 'Thou shalt not eat stones.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Any beginning is also an ending, you know. You can’t have just the one.”
― Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue

“It is as it is. Betren son of Bromwell Defender of Delmarath”
― Cynthia Willerth, A Matter of Honor

“Sometimes the scariest part of waking up isn’t what you remember — it’s what the world wants you to forget.”
― Vidwesh Mushkam, Parallax: The Commencement

“Reality came pre-labeled now. If you wanted the unlabeled version, you needed permission.”
― Taimour AlNeimat, The Day Satoshi Returned: A Novel

“The divide between the endless and the ephemeral. - James Nugent, The Sigma Cascade”
― James Nugent, The Sigma Cascade

“The issue is not failed communication. It is coercive control.”
― Rafal Burchard, Only Whether It Was True: A Novel of Trauma, Healing, and Love Beyond the Human

“Sky City worshiped order. The world below did not care what men worshiped.”
― D.C. Barletta, World of Tethys : Book 1: Sky City

“I have watched centuries pass de way others watch rain.”
― Dario Fero

“Eternity is not time.
It is accumulation.”
― Dario Fero, For ever and a day: The shadow side of immortality

“The water knew more about Sky City than the men who ruled it.”
― D.C. Barletta, World of Tethys : Book 1: Sky City

“One of my favorite reader descriptions of my world-building is that it feels 'theatrical.' It’s exactly the energy I wanted—like a classic Hammer Horror film with a speculative twist. ”
― Shani Cossins, A Game of Masquerade

“We are not ourselves. They are us. Every breath, every thought, every heartbeat is shaped by the invisible architects who have ruled since the birth of the cosmos.”
— Dr. C. M. Mane, The Architects of the Universe”
― Charusheel Mane, The Architects of The Universe

“It is the final time she will be on this side of the river, tending to something alive. Commuting with the mango tree, she feels it bid her goodbye. The thought makes her sob. The memory of her partner leaving their home presses behind her eyes; she sobs so strongly that the time and space her body occupies fall into the shattering depth at the back of her eyelids. Her partner had left her with a great love that struggled to be contained, a mighty creature seeking its owner. She feels her body turn cold and hears her sobs ringing between her ears, not noticing the elephant has walked up to the tree, unconcerned, and curled its trunk around the mango. The leaves rustle in delight as Mai plucks the fruit.

Snapping back into place, the branch flings water droplets onto the woman's body, making her jump. Her sob catches in her throat. She steadies herself against the elephant, who is indifferent to her presence and complex grief as it chews on the mango. The recruit stands at a safe distance, hesitant. By her ankles, the dog stares at her with its querying eyes. She slows her breathing, pressing her cheek to the body of the elephant, feeling the great creature inhale and exhale as it enjoys the single mango she has nurtured into existence. She wipes her face with her palms.

This, too, is life, she realises. To be thrown from one great feeling to another, to be brought down to your senses with something as simple and essential as water and the warm body of an animal. To nurture something from the earth, with which you can feed someone other than yourself.”
― Diana Rahim, We Saw Mountains

“Bones weren't meant for disposal. God wastes nothing.”
― Renée Christine Martine, The Shaling: Bones of the Past: Because Déjá Vu Isn’t Just a Glitch