Stephen R. Donaldson

“The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care. She was beautiful from the auburn hair that crowned her head to the tips of her white toes. He was handsome and courageous. She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments.As in all the fables, they were made for each other.”

“Be true, unbeliever.”

“It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.”

“This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken.”

“I may not yet be as old as dirt, but dirt and I are starting to have an awful lot in common.”

“The speed felt tremendous. And the bottom of the ravine was treacherous. She ought to control her mount somehow - slow it; steer it to safer footing. Of course. And while she was at it, she ought to defeat the Alend Monarch's army, take care of Master Gilbur and the arch-Imager Vagel, and produce peace on earth. While composing great music with her free hand. Instead of doing all that, however, she concentrated with a pure white intensity that resembled terror on simply staying in the saddle”

“I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira that night when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named Jose, had just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. A piece of real quiet. Jose's cheeks bristled because he didn't shave very often, and his apron was dingy because it didn't get washed very often, and his fingernails had little crescents of grime under them. The glass he poured for me wasn't all that clean. But the stuff he poured was golden-amber and beautiful, like distilled sunlight, and it made the whole place soothing as sleep—which drunks know how to value because they don't get much of it.”

“Part of him wanted to weep... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.”

“The portal structure is simply a technique: it is neither necessary nor unnecessary, except as the writer and the story make it so. In the case of 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,' it was absolutely necessary to my intentions.”

“For a variety of reasons, my books struck the marketplace like a thunderclap; and one of those reasons was that there were so few alternatives available. Readers who loved Tolkien, and who were not satisfied by Terry Brooks, had nowhere else to turn.”

“A real man—real in all the ways that we recognize as real—finds himself suddenly abstracted from the world and deposited in a physical situation which could not possibly exist: sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre. There he is informed by a disembodied voice that he has been brought to that place as a champion for his world. He must fight to the death in single combat against a champion from another world. If he is defeated, he will die, and his world—the real world—will be destroyed because it lacks the inner strength to survive.The man refuses to believe that what he is told is true. He asserts that he is either dreaming or hallucinating, and declines to be put in the false position of fighting to the death where no "real" danger exists. He is implacable in his determination to disbelieve his apparent situation, and does not defend himself when he is attacked by the champion of the other”

“I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.”

“Where do you get dreams like this?”

“Of the authors published under Ballantine's Adult Fantasy logo, only Evangeline Walton 'spoke' to me.”

“I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse.”

“Everything dies, from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest galaxy.”

“But he could not call the doctors at the leprosarium. They would return him to Louisiana. They would treat him and train him and counsel him. They would put him back into life as if his illness were all that mattered, as if wisdom were only skin deep, as if grief and remorse and horror were nothing but illusions, tricks done with mirrors, irrelevant to chrome and porcelain and clean, white, stiff hospital sheets and fluorescent lights.”

“And he who wields white, wild magic gold is a paradoxFor he is everything and nothingHero and foolPotent, helplessAnd with one word of truth or treacheryHe will save or damn the earthBecause he is mad and saneCold and passionateLost and found”

“When the emergency brappers went of they did what any dedicated, well-trained and quick-minded Service personnel would do; they paniced.From the short story What Makes Us Human.”