Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

And that, to me, embraces the very soul of the most important commandment you’ll find anywhere in your Principles of Successful Termination: ‘Do in others as you would have others do you in.’

Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes. And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran screaming from the place.

“How in hell is anybody supposed to help you if you won’t ask?” Because asking is dangerous, I could tell her. Because to ask is to hope that someone answers, and it hurts so bad when nobody does.

Never trust a writer who doesn’t have too many books to read. Or a reader, for that matter.

Live long enough, you realize some folks can be handed a problem and some tools, and they’ll sort it out. And I never think twice about hiring that sort of fellow.

You made a haunted house out of your own flesh and bones.

An anthology of short stories by Black authors redefining the horror genre.

A dark fiction anthology by indigenous writers.

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.

The internet’s a great place for finding out about stuff you’re kind of interested in, but it can’t really help with the things you really want to know. It’s even worse for things you don’t know anything about.

How many women throughout history were blamed for the weaknesses of men? We made such convenient scapegoats. We were raised to be small, to be silent, to take whatever we were given and no more.

When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.

The city in the south would go the way of limestone, crumbling into the desert until nothing was left but an archaeological layer of dark gray ash and sorrow.

Fear is generous and does not exclusively live in the hearts of mortals.

Can you imagine the colonized fighting on behalf of the colonizer to protect the colonizer from being colonized?

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.

How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.

The unsaid thing about funerals is that directly after the communal mourning for someone you love, after everyone is gone and the connected grief dispersed, comes a solitude beyond imagining. A great, gaping nothing where a whole person and life and future used to be. The other side of a funeral is abyss.