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“Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.”
― J. R. R. Tolkien

“Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.”
― M. John Harrison

“I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“Ha-ha!' the fox laughed. '*Just* stories, you say, as if stories mean nothing? Stories are the stuff that sticks the world together. Stories are the mud from which we're all made. The power to imagine stories is the power to remake the world as we dream it.”
― C. Alexander London, Moonlight Brigade

“The villages slept as the capable man went down,
Time swished on the village clocks and dreams were alive,
The enormous gongs gave edges to their sounds,
As the rider, no chevalere and poorly dressed,
Impatient of the bells and midnight forms,
Rode over the picket docks, rode down the road,
And, capable, created in his mind,
Eventual victor, out of the martyr's bones,
The ultimate elegance: the imagined land.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

“You can't work in the library without going into the Old Levels," said Mirelle somberly. "At least some of the time. I wouldn't be keen on going to some parts of the Library, myself."
Lirael listened, wondering what they were talking about. The Great Library of the Clayr was enormous, but she had never heard of the Old Levels.
She knew the general layout well. The Library was shaped like a nautilus shell, a continuous tunnel that wound down into the mountain in an ever-tightening spiral. This main spiral was an enormously long, twisting ramp that took you from the high reaches of the mountain down past the level of the valley floor, several thousand feet below.
Off the main spiral, there were countless other corridors, rooms, halls, and strange chambers. Many were full of the Clayr's written records, mainly documenting the prophesies and visions of many generations of seers. But they also contained books and papers from all over the Kingdom. Books of magic and mystery, knowledge both ancient and new. Scrolls, maps, spells, recipes, inventories, stories, true tales, and Charter knew what else.
In addition to all these written works, the Great Library also housed other things. There were old armories within it, containing weapons and armor that had not been used for centuries but still stayed bright and new. There were rooms full of odd paraphernalia that no one now knew how to use. There were chambers where dressmakers' dummies stood fully clothed, displaying the fashions of bygone Clayr or the wildly different costumes of the barbaric North. There were greenhouses tended by sendings, with Charter marks for light as bright as the sun. There were rooms of total darkness, swallowing up the light and anyone foolish enough to enter unprepared.
Lirael had seen some of the Library, on carefully escorted excursions with the rest of her year gathering. She had always hankered to enter the doors they passed, to step across the red rope barriers that marked corridors or tunnels where only authorized librarians might pass.”
― Garth Nix, Lirael

“His lips met mine and I burn.”
― Elise Kova, A Deal with the Elf King

“The planet of people lives in three shifts: we’d be too crowded if we all went to sleep in the evening and woke up in the morning at the same time. So a third of us live in the morning, a third of us live in the evening and a third of us live at night. Europe never closes all its eyes.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, FUTU.RE

“I can imagine”
― Alexander Wales, Worth the Candle

“If you have ever been disappointed in a badly-made setting, you know the felling of betrayal and the sting of wasted time. When you invest time and money in a fictional work, only to discover the world is poorly made, it's a betrayal of your trust.”
― Steven Savage, Way With Worlds Book 1: Crafting Great Fictional Settings

“World building is not just about creating a place, but crafting a story that exists within it, giving life to its inhabitants and breathing soul into its landscapes.”
― J. Edwards Holt, The Seven Branches

“So it turns out that we emerge into an antiquated FUTURE from a spaceship that never took off for the distant stars. And it was right not to, by the way. We’ve got no fucking business out there.

But what we see in front of us is the present.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, FUTU.RE

“Men retreated from the heavens â€� but not for long. Before God could even blink, He had to squeeze up, and then He was evicted. Now Europe’s covered right across with Towers of Babel, and these days it’s not a matter of pride â€� it’s just that there’s no more living space left.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky

“In order to force it down, I cut myself a piece of meat. It’s already cold. It’s too tough for my taste, on the dry side. The beef that I eat usually melts in my mouth. But this roast has to be chewed, as if it actually used to be an animal’s muscles. Damn, what if it really is genuine?”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, FUTU.RE

“And instantly the pale Apollo faces fall away from the human ones. For a brief moment I see before me not an ancient Attic army, not a reincarnated phalanx from the time of Alexander the Great, but a red-faced, agitated crowd â€� the same as the one that is rampaging down below us. And then, replacing those abstract, beautiful, marble masks, they all tug on alien, black ones â€� with mirror windows instead of eyes and filter canisters instead of mouths.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, FUTU.RE

“Short stories are very different from novel-length works. From the structure point of view, there are fewer characters, no subplots, and a lot less description of the setting and the characters populating the story. A short story simply doesn’t have room for world buildingâ€� obviously. You grab the story with the first few words and don’t let go or digress for a minute. There is no room for expositionâ€� or pretty descriptions of fashion or cool explanations of scientific principles on which the story is based or commentary of how computer interfaces changed in the future. A novel has room to think, to orchestrate multiple melodies on a theme, whereas a short story is a driven commentary on a single cord.”
― Olga Werby, Twin Time

“A writer can create a more just world in books by shining a light on that injustice.”
― Yang Huang

“Some gods rule over their worlds; others are part of the fabric of the Universe where those worlds exist.”
― Susana Imaginário, Wyrd Gods

“The only good reason to put something in your world is that you want it to be there.”
― James D'Amato

“Beyond those somewhat anchored fantasy settings are the wild-eyed and the wahoo worlds. This is by no means pejorative, as these include some of my personal favorites, but it is meant to show that there are high-concept, love-’em-or-hate-’em sorts of settings. Call them worlds of pure chaos, places where anything goes and where the usual rules do not apply. They are not meant to be realistic, and indeed that is their appeal. They are settings unmoored from reality and operating by rules of your design—but these settings do have rules. To provide some examples, think of places like China Mieville’s Bas Lag, Pratchett’s Disc World, Frank Baum’s Oz, David “Zebâ€� Cook’s Dark Sun and Planescape, Keith Baker’s Eberron, Jim Ward’s Gamma World, NCSoft’s Guild Wars, Andrew Leker’s Jorune, Michael Moorcock’s Melnibone, Jeff Grubb’s Spelljammer, and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. These are places where truly Weird Shit happens, with different rules of physics, alien landscapes, magical wastelands, alien gods, mutants, and cosmologies. It’s fun to go out on the edge, and fantasy is always exploring strange places like this. These are the high-wire acts of worldbuilding. They take creative risks, not always successfully, and they endure a higher degree of mockery than the real fantasies or anchored fantasies do because of those creative risks. They also attract a loyal following who love that particular flavor of weird. Just ask any Planescape fan.”
― Wolfgang Baur, Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design

“Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.”
― Kameron Hurley, God's War

“Zai’s promises about Faery being lush and alive? Maybe actually not a lie after all.

Because everything up here is green. The starlight overhead is just bright enough that I can still make out the sprawling scenery unfolding in front of us. Trees taller than anything I’ve ever seen, fields of wildflowers stretching on and on.

There are buildings, too, but they’re not like anything on Earth. They’re built right into the layout of the land, not disrupting anything to make space for themselves. There are homes nestled into the giant limbs of the trees, and tucked into massive tangles of flowers. Cavenia has led us to a massive door carved directly into a sloping hillside.

There are people moving around, still finishing up their days. Witches and fae move together, intermingling without concern. They’ve set up in what appears to be some kind of town center, gathered around a natural pool of water, where children splash.

It isn’t only witches and fae, either. Pixies dart in the air. A goblin helps a young fae patch a hole in the tree branch roof of their home. The sight of a hellhound with her two pups makes my heart ache for Boom, back in Asalin. [...]

Overhead, floating islands dot the sky, their undersides made of roots that hang loosely toward the ground. I can barely make out the greenery peeking over the edge on top. One of them has a waterfall flowing off the side, and the water seems to turn to mist before it reaches anyone below.

The islands look small from here, as high up as they are, but I know they must be huge. Know, because I can see dragons lounging on all of them. [...]

Behind us, I can make out the island we came from in the distance, the colossal divot of an empty ocean stretched between us. This far above it, I realize the island is shaped like a near-perfect crescent moon.”
― H.E. Edgmon, The Fae Keeper

“Life before death,â€� Teft said, wagging a finger at Kaladin. “The Radiant seeks to defend life, always. He never kills unnecessarily, and never risks his own life for frivolous reasons. Living is harder than dying. The Radiant’s duty is to live.
“Strength before weakness. All men are weak at some time in their lives. The Radiant protects those who are weak, and uses his strength for others. Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.�
Teft picked up spheres, putting them in his pouch. He held the last one for a second, then tucked it away too. “Journey before destination. There are always several ways to achieve a goal. Failure is preferable to winning through unjust means. Protecting ten innocents is not worth killing one. In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Hey, Josh, this is the guy who called dibs on my womb after one date. I know it sounds crazy, but he's also half Godzilla, so it all makes perfect sense in his world.”
― Roe Horvat, Skydive

“A book is a world constructed with words. But the true miracle in that is how readers enter this world upon opening the book, and then the world remains within the reader after closing it. That miracle is both amazing and terrifying. Indeed, you are what you read. So choose wisely the worlds you get in and the worlds you let in. There is not a hammer that can destroy what is built by the pen.”
― Khayri R.R. Woulfe, Stories Notepad

“They sculpted me from shadows, bone, and the very essence of power.
I am no mere being. I am a god.”
― Avelyn Mae , Defying the King: A Vampire Paranormal Romance

“The world was broken over eight hundred years ago, during The Reckoning. Now it is a time of darkness, a time of war, of blood and slaughter. It is a time of fire and dissolution.”
― Toby R. Beeny, The Bjornlinga Saga #1

“We men of the north are not an overly philosophical race; living in harsh, unforgiving lands does not typically afford the opportunity to recline on couches and debate the nature of the universe, as those in Kanayama are wont to do.”
― Toby R. Beeny, The Bjornlinga Saga #1