Joe Kotowski

“It is, in fact, a kind of magic—perhaps the strongest of all,” Morgenes continued. “Study that, if you wish to understand power, young Simon. Don’t fill your head with nattering about spells and incantations. Understand how lies shape us, shape kingdoms.” “But that’s not magic,” Simon protested, lured into the discussion despite himself. “That doesn’t do anything. Real magic lets you . . . I don’t know. Fly. Make bags of gold out of a pile of turnips. Like in the stories.” “But the stories themselves are often lies, Simon. The bad ones are.” The doctor cleaned his spectacles on the wide sleeve of his robe. “Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth.”
― Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower

“They had come to the very heart of the great, invincible city of Mehxicoh-Tenoxtitlan, and their task was almost complete. Everything was a little hazy, muddled. All of it an honor perhaps undeserved. They had made it here with staggering effort and lunatic determination, and they had proved themselves to be good soldiers, going on when no one else would have, always betting against the odds.”
― Álvaro Enrigue, You Dreamed of Empires

“On the third day her head was delightfully light. She was just air, just breath, just a breathing organ. A fan. A flute. In, out, in, out, and on and on. On the fifth day things moved too fast, too slow, or not at all. She felt infuriated by the slow passage of time. Her brain was racing in a way that wouldn’t calm; she felt as if her heartbeat must now be faster than a hummingbird’s. How had she not dissolved? How had she not vibrated into nothingness?”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“The question here is the responsibility I bear in the face of the reasonable fear that what is being said won’t be understood. The risk is worth the weight of that responsibility. The sole duty of a writer is to minister to his readers: to liberate them from inexactitude out of respect for the mysterious and touching pact of loyalty that they make with books. But the problem is that I don’t always know why name changes are significant in Mexico, and my hunch is that there is a whole history and politics behind it. When something is clear to a writer, I think it’s fair to ask him not to obscure it, but when something is unclear I think it should be left that way. The honest thing is to relay my doubts, and let the conversation move one step forward: the readers may know better.”
― Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death