Contemporary Fantasy Quotes

“Depression is a funny thing. Some days you have the strength to get up out of bed and attempt to live your life as a normal human being, but others…you just don’t want to leave your room and socialize with the outside world—the world that you hate on days like this. You stay secluded in a tiny space, left alone to the thoughts that eat at your brain until you finally sit down and let them be thought.”
― Ashley Earley, The Darkest Light

“The sky was on fire.”
― Kyoko M., Of Dawn & Embers

“James had taken his own life, but the need to do so was not something easily explained. He had the life he wanted: money, a home, a job, a wife, a good friend. I’d known people who died at their own hand because life became unbearable, or because something happened, something terrible. That wasn’t so for James—there was something inside him, something a part of him, something over which he had no control, but which had absolute control over him.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“Jack...why is there a dragon in our backyard?”
― Kyoko M., Of Dawn & Embers

“Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing.

The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed.

Then it pounced.

The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time.

“Holy shit,” Jack muttered.

“Have we got a visual?”

“Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.”

“Alright, so what’s the plan?”

“They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.”

“Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.”

“Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything.

But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him.

Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’”

The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.”
― Kyoko M., Of Claws & Inferno

“Hunting dragons brings out the best and worst in people.”
― Kyoko M., Of Wings & Shadows

“She stood in the snow, effervescent, all pale skin and blonde hair, clad in white and bathed in moonlight. She should have looked angelic, instead she looked like a corpse, freshly raised from the grave, frosted in ice and darkness, swaying precariously in a graveyard.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“I found serenity in the towers, especially the highest, even in the midst of winter. The crows also enjoyed the lofts, and I habitually fed them.
Often I held conference with the grotesques lining the summit. The gryphon was perhaps my favourite. I’d regularly sat beside them when feeling pensive, even before James’s death, one leg dangling precariously over the edge”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over.
For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped in the terror of the moment.
Not so for my poor, elegant wraiths. They were like the old-fashioned zoetropes you find at the seaside: a tiny slice of a world in a box, brief yet somehow also eternal.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“I imagined her poised, a humerus in one hand, a toothbrush in the other, as she gently brushed away the last remnants of the person who had once used that arm to shake hands, open doors, lift a mug of tea. I wondered if it was so very different from how I myself looked when I sat on the floor of my finds room, perhaps sitting cross-legged, at the centre of a circle of newly cleaned bones, a tibia in one hand, a toothbrush in the other …”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“Conflict was what had mended their hearts, it was in their nature to be discordant before finding harmony.”
― Myosotis, Bloodlines and Shrines

“Clinging to Kai felt like the only way out of her mind, the path to light and freedom... but sinking further in the silence of the shadows with Ren felt like relief and peace.”
― Myosotis, Hexes and exes

“I live here, yet I am not seen.
The world pulses with bloodshed,
that sends shivers down my spine.

Try, I do, to find places to hide
within the confines of these walls,
away from the rage of metal.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“Here is a paper crease,
folded severely by a determined hand.
It is the crossroad that I’ve been told
to keep an eye out for.
I can do this!

Stepping onto the crease,
I tense my body in anticipation of the worst.
I am rising higher now as the crease grows,
forming into a large, dotted green hill.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“I feel the searing, burning of my hands,
caught alight by the red-tipped fire.
Silent I am, mesmerised by the flames
that have now caught me in their trap.

Fire is bad.
Fire takes people away.

Claire’s words are accurate.
I am in a burning dream world.
One that I may never leave.
My hands and arms are now alight
and my eyes are stinging with tears.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“Instinctively, I flap my arms beside me,
streaking fire across the sky
with my red flamed, fluttering wings.

High I am, staring down at
the creased world below me.
A world that I have sworn to protect.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“You can always leave my service.”

“Don’t you see, Diana? If I did that, I’d break not one but two hearts. For I know you love me, though you haven’t said it yet.”

I closed the gap between us and put a steady palm on Eric’s chest. “Oh, Eric. You do know me. I love you so much, it sometimes terrifies me.”
― Audrey De Leon, The Guard of Adriane

“In the distance, steel-blue mountains loomed heavy on the horizon, their shoulders burdened with the same accursed snow the gods were currently depositing upon the lowlands. Between us and the mountains, the vast expanse of one of the innumerable caravan sites littering the Welsh shores was dimly visible, and at the far edges of the sands, grey waves tipped a mulch of brown foam up on to the beach, a sudden deposition of wishy-washy creatures that seemed to spider-leg over each other in their haste to reach the shore and see what all the fuss was about.
But even these creatures comprised of sea-foam were freaked out by the death-stare, for the little critters swiftly dissipated under the force of a skeletal glower.
A skull lay in the sand, its empty sockets staring down the beach at the retreating surge. Their fear wouldn’t last long. Soon they’d realise the skeleton had not engaged in pursuit, their confidence would grow, and they’d encroach, further and further up the bank. Eventually, they’d be close enough to see it was completely inert, and would overrun our position, victoriously sweeping up their fallen foe and dragging it back out with them into the dreary waves.”
― Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael

“I am ready for battle. I am ready to fight.”
― Ashley Earley, The Darkest Light

“Mattie, I'm sorry to drag you away." "Don't worry about it. It's late. My mother always said nothing good happens after midnight." I barked out a surprised laugh. "Your mother, clearly, is not a Sidhe.”
― Belinda M. Gordon, Tressa's Treasures

“Betty’s accent was everything Cent’s wasn’t-deep and New England. Her ending R sounds were more like an H, and her word choices…they’d all but needed dictionaries to understand each other when they’d met the year before.”
― Jeanne G'Fellers, Cleaning House

“At my sister's third grace orientation, there was a shooting... If I had gone, maybe I would've been able to save them.”
― Brielle Orama, Kaylor Fogie

“Colorful characters animate this magical tale with an environmental message."

Kirkus”
― Luanne C. Brown, Once in a Pink Moon

“His body is a weapon, in every sense. A cruelly beautiful, sublimely lethal weapon.
Sheer cosmic poetry. An ode to infinite blessing and destruction.
Wen White—CELESTIAL ACADEMY: Essence”
― Olivia Pharos

“If Ren was hell, then Kai was paradise; and Lee's soul was stuck in purgatory, ripped apart by their opposite pulls.”
― Myosotis, Hexes and exes

“In a garden of thorns, Ren saw the flower blooming despite the hardships. Kai has never seen the thorns; all he's ever witnessed are the beautiful petals... and I can't bear the thought of Kai prickling a finger and bleeding on my account.”
― Myosotis, Potions and Arsons

“People who easily discriminate against others cannot truly be trusted with power.”
― Myosotis, Bloodlines and Shrines

“Only in New Orleans could you find a siren, a werewolf, and an elf hanging out together in a bar.”
― Sara Reynolds, Silencing The Siren

“I’ve picked my poison knowing I can withstand it.” She wasn’t entirely convinced of her own statement.
Was Ren’s affection the poison infecting her heart, or was her desire for Kai the true venom growing within?

Was there even a remedy for such a powerful intoxication?”
― Myosotis, Potions and Arsons

“I swallowed and took a deep breath. “You can always leave my service.”

“Don’t you see, Diana? If I did that, I’d break not one but two hearts. For I know you love me, though you haven’t said it yet.”

I closed the gap between us and put a steady palm on Eric’s chest. “Oh, Eric. You do know me. I love you so much, it sometimes terrifies me.”
― Audrey De Leon, The Guard of Adriane