Speculative Fiction Quotes

“Of all the Winter Service Industries, the Winter Consul was the most dangerous. Few who joined expected to last out the decade, yet recruitment was never much of a problem. You didn't find the job, they said, it found you. No-one ever who entered the Winter voluntarily wasn't trying to leave something behind.”
― Jasper Fforde, Early Riser

“No matter how desperately a mother loves you, she can only put up with so much. And so, the day came when Mother Nature lashed out against us.

I understood where Nature was coming from. My family never listened to me either, which is why I didn't tell them about the guns I bought.”
― Brenda Marie Smith, If Darkness Takes Us

“When do things change entirely you wonder? When do they get better? When will it be possible? It is possible now. You are built to open your fists and show me your palms and to pass food from them into the hands of others. You are built for comfort and for fire, for battle and for poetry and you are a child of my family and my family was made by the world. Here we stand in the dark now and I am old and you are holding my hand and walking me from the bed to the window. We are looking out at all of it, the wonder and the danger. There are voices and the sun blazes and everything is bright enough that if I were reading the letters on your skin, I wouldn’t be able to parse them. Now look at your own hand and the wrinkles in them. Those wrinkles are what happens when you clinch your fists. You were born for this resistance, for this preparation, for this life. You were born to fight.”
― Victor LaValle, A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers

“I no longer trusted the sun. I kept half an eye on it, night and day. I told myself that the sun would not go full rogue on us and send a pulse to suck our atmosphere away, but I had a hard time believing it....”
― Brenda Marie Smith, If Darkness Takes Us

“Our perfect biological future can now be designed—but who gets to choose?”
― J.S. Morrison

“She wasn’t about to change, thanks. It was her United States, too.”
― Bonnie J. Morris, Sappho's Bar and Grill

“Well, without at least some optimism writing anything is impossible -- you have to believe that someone out there will be reading what you write. Even more so for science fiction for me -- we're thinking and writing about the future, so to a greater or lesser extent we're thinking that there will be a future to participate in, and that people will be there to tell us what we got right and what we got wrong. Even dystopian literature often trades in hope of some form -- people fighting against the dystopia, for example. There will always be specific counter-examples, but I think generally science fiction has optimism baked in. We believe in the future, even if there's a long slog between where we are now and where we will go.”
― John Scalzi

“Mottled light swept the garden, creating an
illusion of movement. The air rippled, on the edge of hearing, with the bittersweet song of a wingen.”
― Janalyn Voigt, DawnSinger

“White Monkey Chronicles is like Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, J.K. Rowling and Gloria Steinem got drunk one night and decided to write a book!”
― B.J. Austin

“The element of faith is what writing speculative fiction is all about. We introduce readers to the supernatural and the miraculous which cannot be explained through reason.”
― Sarah Rosinski

“Our perfect biological future is now a choice--But who gets to choose?”
― J. S. Morrison

“When we lifted the body out of the stolen Chevy, the moon was full and it was goddamn cold. No fluid had leaked onto the upholstery, but the memory of what I’d done lingered, filling my nostrils with a coppery scent that made my stomach churn. I shut the trunk, and nodded at Nico, signaling him to walk towards the barn. Beneath the snow, the frozen mud was slick as glass.”
― Alicia Hilton, Moonlight, Gunshot, Mallet, Flame

“The future is not what we imagined.”
― J.S. Morrison

“What exactly happened depends on who you ask. When the possibilities intertwine like a hundred people having sex with a herd of goats, we call it a “barblefarb.”
— Canduka Cantor (From "The Perfection of Fish")”
― J.S. Morrison

“What exactly happened depends on who you ask. When the possibilities intertwine like a hundred people having sex with a herd of goats, we call it a 'barblefarb.”
― J.S. Morrison

“At an abstract level, war is like sex. It’s all about positioning.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Reality is a dipsey-doodle dancer.”
― J.S. Morrison

“There was never a Lady Luck. It was always a man.”
― J.S. Morrison

“History is like news reports of sex orgies. It helps us imagine what we missed.”
― J.S. Morrison

“After careful analysis, I see what I believe.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Lies become reality if we believe them. “Truth” isn’t truth.”
― J.S. Morrison

“The evil twin of imagination is paranoia. We construct alternative realities by connecting real and imagined dots.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Through genetic memory, the dead inform the behavior of the living.”
― J.S. Morrison

“In theory, you can debate whether you’re alive or dead or dreaming. In practice, the decision’s easy.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Utopia is simply the fulfillment of dreams, the absence of cops and a great big bag of money.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Who we are is a belief;
What we might become is a hope or fear.”
― J.S. Morrison

“In the past, art transmitted culture. In the future, science and engineering will do the job.”
― J.S. Morrison

“In a psychological multiverse, everyone can be right.”
― J.S. Morrison

“They say fish are disappearing from the oceans. Maybe they’re just getting smarter, and we can’t find them.”
― J.S. Morrison

“Experience helps us develop good judgment about religion. And bad judgment helps us develop that experience.”
― J.S. Morrison