Writing Fantasy Quotes

#1. As a kid, I pretty much got nothing but scorn, and occasionally active animus, for writing fantasy and squirreling it away in my closet and, later, under the mattress supports in my bed.

Sherwood Smith

#2. Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.

Terry Brooks

#3. When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

Laini Taylor

#4. When I started really writing fantasy, one of the things I noticed was a real absence of sexuality in the genre at all. And it's such a profound part of the human experience that it's a really big thing to leave out.

Jacqueline Carey

#5. When writing fantasy
novels, one must be careful what one
invents. For every benefit, there is
usually a drawback.

J.K. Rowling

#6. My feeling is that writing Fantasy should be harder - not easier - than writing any other kind of fiction.

Jane Lindskold

#7. If you're writing fantasy or science fiction, it's really hard to do if you don't know a lot, at least in a basic way, about how the real world works.

Tad Williams

#8. I think that my passion for writing fantasy began at about the same time as my passion for reading fantasy.

Robin Hobb

#9. I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.

Terry Pratchett

#10. Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

China Mieville

#11. I started to write a series of fantasy novels when I was eleven. I have never taken anything artistic as seriously; since then, writing has felt like an attempt to get back there, to my bedroom, my maps, those races and languages and runes.

Ken Baumann

#12. There is nothing to me but you. I know it's pathetic but, oh darling, it's true.

F.K. Preston

#13. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Criss Jami

#14. If Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker had teamed up to write epic fantasy, something like Split Heirs might have resulted.

John DeChancie

#15. Writing is my dream. From romance to dragons; fairies to fantasy worlds, this is where I live and play. Thanks be to God!

Lisa Hannah Wells

#16. 'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination, writing these stories of murder.

Nathan Fillion

#17. I am a storyteller, spiraling fantasy and reality into mystical tales. That eerie space between fact and fiction, where only the brightest light can scare the shadows - you will find me there.

Sara Frost

#18. When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there.

Piers Anthony

#19. There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

Washington Irving

#20. People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

Michelle M. Pillow

#21. If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.

Neil Gaiman

#22. If fiction and fantasy books are escapism, then let an author write them so as to better equip the reader to face reality by the end.

Brett Armstrong

#23. I would write light entertainment nonfiction pieces during the day, then come home and work on my fantasy fiction. It was very difficult to get out of the one mindset and into another one.

Cassandra Clare

#24. As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again.

Michelle M. Pillow

#25. Energy is a being yet is not. For it to materialise it must be pure thus it turns into a crystal like form.
That is the true being of the Elders and the Three Immortal Blades.
And your body has been cursed with it.
Max Jacket- The Three Immortal Blades

Kia Carrington-Russell

#26. I think authors are just realizing there's no real reason to feel limited to a narrow set of genre rules in their writing. There's no reason a mystery novel can't have fantastic elements in it. Similarly, there's no reason why your epic fantasy series can't have elements of a mystery.

Patrick Rothfuss

#27. I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.

Don Roff

#28. Even in the hottest fire there's a bit of water. my The Opposite Of Magic.

Ivan Stoikov

#29. I don't like writing romance in my books because that's the turning point of 90% of YA sci-fi/fantasy books and, quite frankly, it gets annoying after a while. The protagonist has more important things to worry about than boys and whether or not they like her.

Meghan Blistinsky

#30. Entire universes flourish in my mind. Sometimes I get lost in there.

Janey Colbourne

#31. My advice is to write about what you are interested in. If you read science fiction and fantasy, then write in that genre. If you read romance novels, then try writing one.

Michael Scott

#32. And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.

Benjamin Kane Ethridge

#33. I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

Jon Krakauer

#34. I really love fantasy. I have to say it is my favourite genre to read and one of the genres I love the most to write.

Cassandra Clare

#35. I could have drowned today. If they hadn't been screaming my name so loudly and if I hadn't woken up, I would have drowned.

Erica Sehyun Song

#36. I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long.

Erica Sehyun Song

#37. The shifting sands of the world ... show how much the surrealists were drawn towards an interrogation of what reality actually is. Unlike fabulists of whatever hue, there is a materiality in surrealist writing that resolutely keeps it, one might say, 'down to earth'.

Michael Richardson

#38. Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

Alberto Manguel

#39. All that is required of you is an open mind and a little patience.

F.K. Preston

#40. He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!

Charles Baudelaire

#41. I will continue to write what I love to read, and the fact that it doesn't sell as well as romance or sci-fi or fantasy isn't the point.

Joanna Penn

#42. The other one was filled with loud and obnoxious tourists. Always boasting on winning a sand castle competition and seeing who could get tanned first. What a whacky bunch of people.

Erica Sehyun Song

#43. There is not much to say about Burrough's writing. It consists of semiliterate ravings by a very sick mind, a kaleidoscope or surrealistic depictions of drug-taking, violent, often misogynistic fantasy, and sexual depravity.

Roger Kimball

#44. Come now, I was not about to let that thing eat you.

Stacy Buck

#45. HARV, can you help at all here?" I asked, spinning downward.
"I am writing your obituary. Well, not so much writing it as updating it," HARV told me.
If I lived, I was going to kill HARV.

John Zakour

#46. The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It's the tender understanding that we're living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there's quite a bit of wonder in that.

F.K. Preston

#47. I was always taught to write the book you want to read. It's a philosophy I haven't wavered from since.

E.A. De Graaf

#48. I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies.

Donita K. Paul

#49. But if what interests you are stories of the fantastic, I must warn you that this kind of story demands more art and judgment than is ordinarily imagined.

Charles Nodier

#50. Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

Octavia E. Butler

#51. If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#52. I suppose when I was writing 'V for Vendetta' I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: 'Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact?' So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world ... It's peculiar.

Alan Moore

#53. A sign read "Free drinks for billiards competitors only." Hand-lettered below read "All others will pay." It was written in blood. I could tell because a red fairy with what looked like black insect wings was writing it at the time, with his own dismembered finger.

Red Tash

#54. My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane.

F.K. Preston

#55. I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

Sarah Zettel

#56. I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals and my fantasies.

Anne Frank

#57. Write for joy. It is the *only* reason to write. Whatever happens to your books afterward, just write for joy. Send your current one out when it's done and forget it, start another, and keep on writing for joy. Words I now live by. Welwyn Wilton Katz

Welwyn Wilton Katz

#58. When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fantasy setting, that writer must realize that excessive coincidence makes the fictional reality the writer is creating less 'real.'

Jane Lindskold

#59. Fantasy is an excellent platform to shine new lights on old truths.

James D. Maxon

#60. I find that writing is as magical as the genre I write in. When the story comes alive and takes over, it's truly a journey to another world.

K.M. Randall

#61. Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

Stephen King

#62. I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#63. Helen Lowe writes wonderful stories, yes, but her work also speaks with lyricism to deeper questions of how we treat each other. With lovely prose that brings vivid life to her characters, she creates a universe with people we care about. This is an author with a gift for fantasy.

Catherine Asaro

#64. Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

Lloyd Alexander

#65. Violence can read like poetry. You just have to describe the act as if you're in love with the way your characters bleed.

F.K. Preston

#66. Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

Philip Larkin

#67. I write in a fantasy world so I can make up my own rules and can change facts when I want to. It's all about having control.

C.S. Woolley

#68. We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.

Susan Sontag

#69. Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.

Sara Sheridan

#70. Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don't give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn't control him.

Chuck Wendig

#71. Diana Wynne Jones' excellent book 'The Tough Guide to Fantasyland' is a compendium of the sort of lazy writing that has given fantasy fiction - especially the sub-section that features elves and dwarves and other Tolkienesque elements - a bad name.

Jane Lindskold

#72. One can fight money only with money! from my Tale Of The Rock Pieces.

Ivan Stoikov

#73. Daniel, I was asked of a budding author, how do you know if your story is on track? My answer: I start by knowing my intention, my target. Then, with purpose, I write the scene that unfolds before me, as faithfully as is human. - Daniel LaMonte

Daniel LaMonte

#74. I like to make blank pages darker. It's this thing I do.

Rob E. Boley

#75. I'm 20 years old. I spend my days in a dictionary and half my mind in Fantasy.

Almney King

#76. I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you're too busy living.

F.K. Preston

#77. I read so I might live a thousand lives in a lifetime. I write to control the particulars in those lives.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#78. If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction ... Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.

Richard Matheson

#79. Fantasy encompasses a wide, wide spectrum of writing. We have beast fables, we have gothics, we have tales of vampires and werewolves, and we have sword and sorcery; we have epics from Homer, and there is just so much out there that we put under the umbrella of 'fantasy.'

Robin Hobb

#80. We spent 10 years writing our first fiction story and truly hope people like it.

Tony D'Urso

#81. The most important thing for any aspiring writer, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything.

George R R Martin

#82. The table was covered with food like roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, roast turkey, roast liquorice and, the centrepiece, a roasted knight.

Elias Zapple

#83. When I do get to chow down on a book, I try to read ones that are nothing like what I'm writing. So, as I'm currently working on a space opera (of sorts) I'm mostly indulging in urban fantasy.

Charles Stross

#84. Ridiculous," he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.

Robert Galbraith

#85. You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike

Robert Galbraith

#86. Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram
it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.

Anne Lamott

#87. Writing is emotional ... it is baring your soul to the world and waiting for someone to acknowledge and love it, or shun and hate it, or worse be indifferent about it.

Anne-Rae Vasquez

#88. I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I ... probably can't!

Hugh Grant

#89. She snorted in amusement at my remark. "When are the guards going to start to notice?"
Keith peered into the distance. "Starting now,

Erica Sehyun Song

#90. Don't use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Or they may take them figuratively - but if so, they'll also take your magics and transformations figuratively. Either way, you're in trouble.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#91. There is nothing I can't do writing in Fantasy. I can have romance, I can have mystery, I can have drama, I can have good characters - I can have everything you can do in any other genre ... plus a dragon.

Patrick Rothfuss

#92. I don't write fantasy, I write reality. Also, my novels have roots to Greek tragedies and as such, there has to be tragedy.

Nicholas Sparks

#93. I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.

Patrick Rothfuss

#94. You could write your way into happiness. It might not be the happiness you'd experience if Eldric pushed Leanne from a cliff, but there's a firefly glimmer in writing something that would please Rose.

Franny Billingsley

#95. I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

Roger Zelazny

#96. I had a few people ask me if I might one day write my own autobiography. I just told them, 'It's already being written; through my books.

T.S. Wieland

#97. Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.

Monica Dickens

#98. I would rather never make a penny on book sales and know that many had derived some fair pleasure from my writing, than to know that very few had ever taken a chance on my work. I certainly won't last forever, but I'd love to think that my imagination will continue to surface in the minds of others.

Eric Diehl

#99. I know have lived, so many times, that the only thing I have left to remember is my writing, cause every single moment in life it's already written.

Piroska Rodriguez

#100. The best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.

Neil Gaiman