Quotes from John Crowley

The event when it came was grand and wild and lasted days, with no priest to read Latin, but a brehon binding the pair in the first degree of the ten degrees of marriage that could be applied.

Well, you know, it's probably not the first time it ever happened in the world," she said.

they slipped one by one again into the merely fictional – Hermes's false Egypt, and Bruno's false Hermes; Kraft's false Bruno; Pierce's false history of the world, the doors that had once blown open blowing closed again one by one down the corridor into the colored centuries.

That was what did the harm, knowing the one, believeing the other.

If you're going to go somewhere, you have to believe you can get there. Somehow, some way.

L'aube n'est pas silencieuse, mais elle est sous-peuplée.

Non, elles savent ce qu'est la mort, elles se lamentent, mais, pour elles, les défunts ne sont plus là ; ils ne sont nulle part — dans une oubliette du cÅ"ur, dans la mémoire voire dans une histoire, mais ce ne sont plus des présences auxquelles on peut parler, auxquelles apporter ou demander du réconfort. Ce ne sont pas des morts à aimer ou à craindre.

How long is the Tale? she had asked, and Mrs. Underhill had said: you and your children and your children's children will all be buried before that Tale's all told.

If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway.

it is a Tale. Only it's longer and stranger than we imagine. Longer and stranger than we can imagine. So what you must do—" she opened her eyes "—what you must do, and what I must do, is forget.

Do you Barble take this Daily Alice to be your awful wedded life for bed or for worse insidious in stealth for which or for poor or to have unto whole until death you do part?

What makes us happy makes us wise

I do," Smoky said. "I do too," Daily Alice said. "Wring," Doctor Word said. "And now you pounce you, man on wife.

I couldn't weep here, any more than I could hope. Of course he couldn't stay: and much as I wanted him by me, I wanted even more that my friend have what he wanted for himself.

I've learned...that here you can never go back the way you came. That you never do anywhere. You only and always go on.

We're made of stories now, brother. It's why we never die even if we do.

Are you, or are you not? Have you the taste of your existence, or do you not? Are you within the country or on the border? Are you mortal or immortal? —Parliament of the Birds 'I want a clean cup,' the Hatter interrupted. 'Everyone move one place.' —Alice in Wonderland

It restores your balance, in the end, even in a funny way your cheerfulness, when you come to know, without regrets, that the best thing that's going to happen in your life has already happened. -from "Snow" in The Big Book of Science Fiction

We're made of stories now brother. Its why we don't die even when we do.

A little later, remembering man's earthly origin, 'dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,' they liked to fancy themselves bubbles of earth. When alone in the fields, with no one to see them, they would hop, skip and jump, touching the ground as lightly as possible and crying 'We are bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth!' —Flora Thompson, Lark Rise

People in tales don't know, always. But there they are.

A perfect image was like a gift of grace, but sin would always be swiftly punished. A sort of Calvinist dogma, where you never knew when you were right, but must be constantly vigilant against error.

He put his hand on the book. To those who have, more will be given, he said. From those who have not will be taken even the little that they have

That night he dreamt of Heaven: Heaven was a dark amusement park, small and joyless, just an iron Ferris wheel turning in eternity and a glum arcade to amuse the faithful.