Fantasy for the most part is really just reality reflected through a storybook lens.

The past is behind us,” said Boudicca,“but the difficulty there is we keep looking over our shoulders.

I don’t talk ill about people I don’t know,” said Bartleby. “I only disparage them in silence and hope they die.

Why don’t you tell me your name?” “No.” “Very well. Your rank?” “What would a woman understand of rank?” “What does my sex have to do with my understanding?” “As I have said, women are not warriors.” “Perhaps in your society they aren’t, but in Frewyn we do very well for ourselves.

And if I use the opportunity to kill you and leave?” the giant said in a tone half-serious half-arch. “I have never known warriors to be dishonourable. Should you prove me wrong, we will all be dead anyway. There is nothing so ugly as reneging a promise, wouldn’t you agree?” The giant clenched his teeth and looked down. “I would,” he murmured.

Boudicca MacDaede was not the most striking of women, but she had a wryness in character and heartiness in form that recommended her to the rough demands of a farmer’s daughter and a soldier’s sufferance." ~ First two lines of book 1 in the Haanta Series

There are very few things in the world I hate more than Daylight Savings Time. It is the grand lie of time, the scourge of science, the blight on biological understanding.

Bartleby is never happy, but he never can be, you know. Life in general offends him. Happiness is something that happens to other people, because life happens to Bartleby. It happens to him frequently and unwarrantedly, and every time he is forced to suffer it, he is always disappointed.

Is not he? I had him along for his books and potions, and kept him for his character. Profundities of disgruntled sentiments, injured spirits, wounded affection, bitterness, marginality, disdain of establishment—I knew we should get on famously.

That is the only sure way of knowing we have made someone happy: making someone miserable by our leaving them.