# Best fantasy and science fiction quotes?



## JamesHutchings (Feb 27, 2011)

I'm trying to collect quotes to display on my site.

They don't necessarily have to be from SF&F stories, but should have that kind of atmosphere.


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
— Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

"We’d better get back, ‘cause it’ll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night… mostly."
— Aliens

"Come with me if you want to live."
— The Terminator

I find it much harder to remember book quotes than movie quotes....


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

A couple longer quotes, in case you don't just want snappy one-liners:

_It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself._

~ Roger Zelazny, _The Guns of Avalon_

_This was not the time to say "I don't know." The brothers had begging, hungry looks, like dogs waiting to be fed. They wanted an answer. It would be nice if it was the right answer, but if it couldn't be, then any answer would do, because then we would stop being worried...and then his mind caught alight.

That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there's food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be._

~ Terry Pratchett, _Nation_


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

And a short one, from Charles Stross's _Halting State_: "Nobody ever imagined a band of Orcs would steal a database table."


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

In Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein inserted a couple of pages of quotes from Lazarus Long. Here are some of my favorites...

_ What are the facts? Again and again and again-what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!_

The second quote somewhat guides my reading choices!


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## Alessandra Kelley (Feb 22, 2011)

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one." (Terry Pratchett)

"... the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious." (Terry Pratchett, _Lords and Ladies_)

"In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway." (Octavia E. Butler, _Wild Seed_)

"Funny how all things people don't understand seem to be 'cursed'." (Nnedi Okorafor, _Zahrah the Windseeker_)

"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers." (Larry Niven)

"There are true unseen forces, but not nearly so many as we believe, nor would they rule us so sternly if we did not admit them to our souls. We would not be assailed half so often by devils, had we not taken the trouble to invent so many of them." (Robert Silverberg, _Lord of Darkness_)

"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." (Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg)


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

"Are robots so different from men? Worlds different. Robots are essentially decent." Dr. Susan Calvin in Isaac Asimov's _I, Robot_.


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## Vivienne Mathews (May 7, 2013)

“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Always been one of my favorites.


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## wilsondm2 (Dec 8, 2008)

“I will not forget one line of this, not one day, I swear. I will always remember when The Doctor was me.”  - the 11th Doctor


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## mattposner (Oct 28, 2010)

"You must fight fear. Fear is the mind-killer." Frank Herbert, Dune

"Mind like a lumber-room: thing wanted, always buried." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.

"Some trust exists in the galaxy, likewise on little planets." Piers Anthony, Blue Adept


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## Alessandra Kelley (Feb 22, 2011)

Oh, well, if we're including "Doctor Who" quotes, I rather like this one from the first Doctor:

"One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

"It’s not always a good thing, he thought, when you run into desperate circumstances and find yourself in the presence of a hero. You may come out alive, but it was possible nothing else that mattered would survive"
    -- Starhawk (A Priscilla Hutchins Novel) by Jack McDevitt


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## Mel Odious (Feb 29, 2012)

"Get out of the road, you dumb motherbleeper."

Kurt Vonnegut by way of Roland Weary ~ _Slaughterhouse Five_


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## Scheherazade (Apr 11, 2009)

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

No one ever said elves are nice.  Elves are bad.

- Terry Pratchett

He has tons more well worth making their way onto any list of quotes.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

"The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm." First line, excluding Prologue, of _Something Wicked This Way Comes_ by Ray Bradbury. It immediately gets you thinking 'UH-oh, something's going on here.'


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## Lyndl (Apr 2, 2010)

Frak!
— Battlestar Galactica


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. - Roy Batty.  Blade Runner.


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