Esther Friesner

Esther Mona Friesner-Stutzman, née Friesner (born July 16, 1951) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is also a poet and playwright.

Quotes

Demons

Here Be Demons (1988)

All page numbers are from the mass market paperback first edition published by Ace ISBN 0-441-32797-4

• When the majority is crazy, the sane ones are kept in asylums. She knew that well; she’d majored in World History.
  • Part 2, Chapter 4, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press” (p. 94)

• Melisan frowned and informed her leader that politics was the answer to every demon’s fondest dreams. Politics, she said, meant less work for Mother. It covered all the bases when it came to the Seven Top Deadly Sins.
  “You get a minor political conflict, like, say, an argument over candidates at a cocktail party,” said Melisan, who only knew about such gatherings from Murakh, “and right away you generate a whole room full of Wrath. Then you move on to elections, and you get the bunch that won’t vote at all because they don’t like either candidate and besides, they figure one vote’s not important.”
  “Ahhh,” sighed Horgist, eyes moist with yearning. “Sloth!”
  “Exactly, my love. Then someone wins the election, and you’ve got the ones who voted for him swelled with pride and the ones who didn’t consumed with Envy. Avarice, Lechery, and Gluttony come after he’s in office, and that’s just what happens in a minor political situation! When you’ve got Avarice and Gluttony working on the grand, international scale, you’ve got the way paved for all-out war, and when what they call National Pride shows up, you’ve got guaranteed Gehenna.”
  • Part 2, Chapter 6, “Our Brothers in Science” (pp. 124-125)

• Innocence is only a matter of not being able to believe in a possibility you can’t imagine.
  • Part 2, Chapter 6, “Our Brothers in Science” (p. 130)

• Faith gagged again, in earnest. Amanda had let her to believe that she was anything but pure, purity no longer being the fashion. Yet here was Geordie, carrying on over her in a style that was popular in the Middle Ages, when you had to adore your lady from afar because if you did it from anear, you’d get her Daddy’s sword in your belly.
  • Part 2, Chapter 7, “When We Last Left Our Hero…” (p. 135)

• Hell is full of incompetent rebels.
  • Part 2, Chapter 8, “Once, or Maybe Twice, in a Lifetime” (p. 144)

• Few hearts are brave enough to stand between old newspapermen and their liquor. Fewer still would defy the thirsty hordes of the electronic media.
  • Part 2, Chapter 9, “Heads Will Roll” (p. 155)

• Amanda gave him the freeze, too. The blue demon hesitated, unsure of whether this snub was a rejection of his leadership or his dubious social standing. There were only a few demons in Debrett’s.
  • Part 3, Chapter 2, “What Place is This?” (p. 168)

• Possession was nine-tenths of the law, and the stray tenth was self-possession.
  • Part 3, Chapter 2, “What Place is This?” (p. 187)

• Someone should either make the rewards of a good better or the punishment of evil worse. Poor planning on a grand scale, I call it. Nothing but poor planning.
  • Part 3, Chapter 3, “Down in the Valley” (p. 203)

• The wind had blown since before time had a name and it would blow until time lost all meaning. It blew the dwindling sands of the desert across the encroaching greenness of the fields and forests, past the teeming cities with their needle spires, silver in the glaring sun. It sang a dirge for all the waste that once stretched past the edge of imagination, and it moaned a lament for all who wandered, lost and outcast and alone.
  • Epilogue (p. 233)