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“I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

“In space there are no seasons, and this is as true of the ships that cross the distances between humanity's far-flung homes. But we measure our seasons anyway: by a smile, a silence, a song.”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows

“It was shivery and scant. Scared. Skint. But just around the edges it was still scintillant.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.”
― Michael Montoure, Slices

“The sitting room is subdued, symmetrical; it's one of the shapes money takes when it freezes. Money has trickled through this room for years and years, as if through an underground cavern, crusting and hardening like stalactites into these forms.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The city lies at the galaxy's dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel.”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows

“He took me down and out into the afterlife of the brightly lit streets, a haze of rain around each streetlight like a galaxy, the whole street a universe spread out like a banquet.”
― Michael Montoure, Slices

“Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space

“It was raining when Amarelle Parathis went out just after sunset to find a drink, and there was strange magic in the rain. It came down in pale lavenders and coppers and reds, soft lines like liquid dusk that turned luminescent mist on the warm pavement. The air itself felt like champagne bubbles breaking against the skin. Over the dark shapes of distant rooftops, blue-white lightning blazed, and stuttering thunder chased it.”
― Scott Lynch, Rogues

“It still hurt her to see their poems before her, printed in the curving Yeged-dai script, using Yegedin forms and the images so beloved of the Yegedin: the single pebble, the grasshopper at twilight, the song of a heartbroken lark sitting in a bent tree.”
― Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows

“The sunrise sky was creeping over the edge of the city in orange-and-scarlet striations, and the clocks were or were not chiming seven.”
― Scott Lynch, Rogues

“He attempted to bark the order and succeeded, albeit with more of a chihuahua result than intended.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“The rhyme pad was a spell book - it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

“The skyscrapers of the city had finished scraping all the sky away, and the clouds overhead were exactly the color of concrete and I was safe and cold in a canyon of glass and steel.”
― Michael Montoure, Slices

“The place smelled male, not the metal-and-soap maleness of a locker room nor the malt-and-sawdust maleness of an old-time corner saloon, but the leather-and-oiled-wood maleness of a city club, as finished and self-consistent as the ash of a fine cigar. At sight of the skirted figure stalking him, the sole visible attendant took refuge behind a showcase; surely a giraffe, were it a male one, would have startled him less.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Some stories aren't meant to be told. The more they get told, the more they change from what they once were, worn down and smooth like pieces of sea glass too beautiful to have ever been broken bottles.”
― Caren Gussoff, Three Songs for Roxy

“L'autre soir un air froid d'opéra m'alita;
Son félé -- bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le décor s'écroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“The broken centerline of the road in her headlights just an endless pulsing ribbon.”
― Michael Montoure, Slices

“Once in a while, he worries, but about what? Like the scattered clouds that drift over farmland in the afternoon, that sort of anxiety is what, ultimately?”
― Tang Fei, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 100, January 2015