The Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Offer Insights to Real Life and Living

Call me crazy, but I find many a precious gem of wisdom in the sci-fi and fantasy books I read. Little bits of, “Wow, now that’s deep and true,” tucked in amidst the clash of empires, legions, hyper-drives, and black holes. Real “Food for Thought” moments.

Here are some few: And yeah, I write ‘em down. In my little book o’ good stuff.

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-:- The blunt truth was, the world beat upon a soul until bones bent and hearts broke – Steven Erikson, Forge of Darkness
-:- Thoughts unspoken left no scars upon others. The fate of the inner landscape of the one doing the thinking was, of course, entirely different. This was the procession, he knew, of the failing mind, and in that failure was found a place where many unspoken thoughts came to rest; and it was a place of prejudice, hatred and ignorance. – Erikson, Forge of Darkness
-:- The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” – which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. – Frank Herbert, Dune
-:- Few childhood convictions survived the grisly details of an adult’s sensibilities. – Erikson, Dust of Dreams
-:- She had known this for years, of course, but in the way of threatening knowledge: at angles, in the shadowy corners of her soul. – Bakker, The White Luck Warrior
-:- Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. – Frank Herbert, Dune
-:- Of course habits, like fleas, are not easy to kill, especially habits of thought and passion. – Bakker, The White Luck Warrior
-:- There is relatively little that words can do for grief. Words can do relatively little about anything. But what else do we have? – Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
-:- Anna – “Why do they confess?”
Bak – “To be cleansed of sin.”
Anna – “But behind every sin there’s another one. It never stops.” – Peter Høeg, The History of Danish Dreams

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And Earth wept . . .