“It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.”
―
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling,
Teeth: Vampire Tales
“People say that life is a party! You arrive after it's started, and you leave before it ends.” ― Ellen Datlow
“Love that can’t trump intellectual integrity isn’t worth the name.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“Most of all, he liked her, the maiden named first for a salad. Not only lust and love, then. For liking surely was the most dangerous. Lust might burn out and love grow accustomed. But to like her was to find in her always the best—of herself, himself, and all the world.” ― Ellen Datlow, Black Heart, Ivory Bones
“I’m too exhausted to sleep,” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“It's my latest," Goldy concluded, "my best, and the one which the New York Times recently described as 'thrilling, sad, heartbreaking' and 'packs a huge wallop.' Entitled The Goldilocks Syndrome, it's currently available in the lobby at a today-only discount of $21.95. And if you act now, I'll sign and date this sucker at no extra charge.” ― Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Black Heart, Ivory Bones
“I hated and loved him in turns, as witches will do, for our hearts are strange and inexplicable.” ― Ellen Datlow, Troll's-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales
“The beer got him, and, for a moment, a rush of idiot compassion urged him to hug a pinch-faced man in brown overalls who sat on a stool surrounded by primitive paintings of Jesus engaged in various farm chores (milking a cow, driving a tractor, killing a hog), but the desire to comfort the untalented, the misguided, left Wally before he could act.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“everything spoken on this earth contains a truth not always apparent at the time.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Monstrous
“Deduction was for the highbrows in top hats and great coats; I performed my detecting with a boot and a six-gun.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft's Monsters
“the scent of overpriced coffee was like the armpit of God.” ― Ellen Datlow, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2014 Edition
“I am thirty-two years old, and the best I can do on a Saturday is accompany my married friends to a craft fair. The thought inspired an instant twitch of self-loathing, because it was such a lame lament. You put something like that in your suicide note, and the cops would have a good laugh. “My wife burned dinner,” someone would say. “I think I’ll hang myself.” Another wit would say, “Hell, nothing but reruns on. I’m gonna get the shotgun out of the attic and blow my damned head off.” Wally found himself resenting these imagined cops. What did they know about his life?” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“We started as accidents,” he continues, behind her. “Leftovers. Microbes in a digital sea. We fed on interrupted processes, interrupted conversations, grew, evolved. The first humans we merged with were children using a public library network too ancient and unprotected to keep us out. Nobody cared if poor children got locked away in institutions, or left out on the streets to shiver and starve, when they started acting strange. No one cared what it meant when they became something new—or at least, not at first. We became them. They became us. Then we, together, began to grow.” ― Ellen Datlow, After
“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man but deteriorate the cat—" Now” ― Ellen Datlow, Tails of Wonder and Imagination
“When the zombies win, their quest to eat and infect human flesh will continue unabated. They will have known only gorging, only feasting; they will not understand the world as anything other than a screaming buffet on the run. Yet there will be only silence and vacant rooms where once there was food, and the zombies, in their slow and stumbling way, will be surprised.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year Volume 3
“It was a nice voice, smooth and deep as double chocolate ice cream.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
“And as for me—feel no sorrow. When you see the wind stir the greenwood, or when you turn the pages of a book made from a tree’s still-blameless flesh, lean close and listen. You hear my voice.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
“My parents threw out the diary when they found it. They didn’t want me keeping secrets in my room, never mind that a room and a girl will keep secrets even without pages to store them.” ― Ellen Datlow, Echoes
“Each letter in the Celtic ogham alphabet stood for a tree and its magical associations, and the symbology of trees is a richly poetic presence in Celtic myths. The English poet Robert Graves, in his extraordinary book The White Goddess, deals at great length with the order and meanings of the letters comprising this tree alphabet. He conjectures that the famous Welsh Battle of the Trees (a group of ancient poems preserved in the sixteenth century manuscript The Romance of Taliesin) refers to a druidic battle of words rather than a literal battle of vegetation.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
“People say that life is a party! You arrive after it's started, and you leave before it ends.” ― Ellen Datlow
“Love that can’t trump intellectual integrity isn’t worth the name.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“Most of all, he liked her, the maiden named first for a salad. Not only lust and love, then. For liking surely was the most dangerous. Lust might burn out and love grow accustomed. But to like her was to find in her always the best—of herself, himself, and all the world.” ― Ellen Datlow, Black Heart, Ivory Bones
“I’m too exhausted to sleep,” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“It's my latest," Goldy concluded, "my best, and the one which the New York Times recently described as 'thrilling, sad, heartbreaking' and 'packs a huge wallop.' Entitled The Goldilocks Syndrome, it's currently available in the lobby at a today-only discount of $21.95. And if you act now, I'll sign and date this sucker at no extra charge.” ― Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Black Heart, Ivory Bones
“I hated and loved him in turns, as witches will do, for our hearts are strange and inexplicable.” ― Ellen Datlow, Troll's-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales
“The beer got him, and, for a moment, a rush of idiot compassion urged him to hug a pinch-faced man in brown overalls who sat on a stool surrounded by primitive paintings of Jesus engaged in various farm chores (milking a cow, driving a tractor, killing a hog), but the desire to comfort the untalented, the misguided, left Wally before he could act.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“everything spoken on this earth contains a truth not always apparent at the time.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Monstrous
“Deduction was for the highbrows in top hats and great coats; I performed my detecting with a boot and a six-gun.” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft's Monsters
“the scent of overpriced coffee was like the armpit of God.” ― Ellen Datlow, Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2014 Edition
“I am thirty-two years old, and the best I can do on a Saturday is accompany my married friends to a craft fair. The thought inspired an instant twitch of self-loathing, because it was such a lame lament. You put something like that in your suicide note, and the cops would have a good laugh. “My wife burned dinner,” someone would say. “I think I’ll hang myself.” Another wit would say, “Hell, nothing but reruns on. I’m gonna get the shotgun out of the attic and blow my damned head off.” Wally found himself resenting these imagined cops. What did they know about his life?” ― Ellen Datlow, Lovecraft Unbound
“We started as accidents,” he continues, behind her. “Leftovers. Microbes in a digital sea. We fed on interrupted processes, interrupted conversations, grew, evolved. The first humans we merged with were children using a public library network too ancient and unprotected to keep us out. Nobody cared if poor children got locked away in institutions, or left out on the streets to shiver and starve, when they started acting strange. No one cared what it meant when they became something new—or at least, not at first. We became them. They became us. Then we, together, began to grow.” ― Ellen Datlow, After
“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man but deteriorate the cat—" Now” ― Ellen Datlow, Tails of Wonder and Imagination
“When the zombies win, their quest to eat and infect human flesh will continue unabated. They will have known only gorging, only feasting; they will not understand the world as anything other than a screaming buffet on the run. Yet there will be only silence and vacant rooms where once there was food, and the zombies, in their slow and stumbling way, will be surprised.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Best Horror of the Year Volume 3
“It was a nice voice, smooth and deep as double chocolate ice cream.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
“And as for me—feel no sorrow. When you see the wind stir the greenwood, or when you turn the pages of a book made from a tree’s still-blameless flesh, lean close and listen. You hear my voice.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
“My parents threw out the diary when they found it. They didn’t want me keeping secrets in my room, never mind that a room and a girl will keep secrets even without pages to store them.” ― Ellen Datlow, Echoes
“Each letter in the Celtic ogham alphabet stood for a tree and its magical associations, and the symbology of trees is a richly poetic presence in Celtic myths. The English poet Robert Graves, in his extraordinary book The White Goddess, deals at great length with the order and meanings of the letters comprising this tree alphabet. He conjectures that the famous Welsh Battle of the Trees (a group of ancient poems preserved in the sixteenth century manuscript The Romance of Taliesin) refers to a druidic battle of words rather than a literal battle of vegetation.” ― Ellen Datlow, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
