Quotessence
Home / Topics / Worldbuilding Quotes

Worldbuilding Quotes

Browse 29 quotes about Worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding Quotes

“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.”

ImaginationWorldbuilding
Book:The Collected Poems
Create image

“U-2200 is a heavily worn, approximately egg-shaped 1.07-meter-tall monolith of tenasserite limestone inhabited by Gua, a non-corporeal entity that claims to be the prehistoric Johorean god of forgetting how to ride a bicycle. [...] U-2200 claims to have dwelled within the stone since its carving, more than 5,000 years ago. Exactly what U-2200 did between that time and the invention of the first actual bicycle in the 19th century is a matter of some debate. Consensus among Organization academics is that U-2200 did nothing, and probably did not exist in its present form. U-2200, however, claims that the bicycle has been invented dozens of times by cultures in all parts of the globe over the course of the past 5,000 years, only for U-2200 to engulf, consume, and negate all human knowledge not only of the riding of bicycles but of the mechanism of the bicycle, before lapsing back into dormancy. It calls this “the Bicyclecycle.”

MythologySurrealDark HumorSpeculative FictionAbsurdismWorldbuildingUnreliable NarratorAncient ArtifactBureaucracy SatireSecret Organization
Book:There Is No Antimemetics Division
Create image

“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.”

WorldWritingBookReadingFantasyBooksWordsWordWorldsWorldbuilding
Book:Stories Notepad
Create image

“Most of the lands around Arton surrendered to forest quickly, but this was especially true of the eastlands. They held evergreen conifers so tall they bruised the sky. Below them algae-cracked boulders lay scattered among the sleeping moss and woody underbrush, the groundcover dense and feral. Its wildness attracted powerful and unusual creatures, and there was a general rule known to those familiar with the area, though it didn’t always help: stick to the road.”

ActionFantasyAdventureAtmosphereAdventure FictionWorldbuildingMythic
Book:The Marrowsgate
Create image

“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.”

Epic FantasyHigh FantasyWorldbuildingGarth NixLiraelClayrClayr LibraryGreat Worldbuilding
Book:Lirael
Create image

“The music stops as they walk out of the forest toward the smooth extra-terrestrial spacecraft glistening in the sun on the far side of the meadow. To Atom, the ship feels like a time machine. Steven and Sylvia watch them with deadpan stares as the three astronauts walk with the spectacle of eclectic, colorful characters on feathered horseback following. A breeze picks up and Atom glances back to see stoic faces with vibrant robes and dresses flowing in the wind.”

WorldbuildingScience FantasyAdventure ReadsAlien WorldCinematic ReadingEpic Sci FiPlanetary RomancePortal VibesSpace And SwordsStrange New Worlds
Book:Eden 2:b
Create image