Terry Brooks

“What they didn't want to believe, what they tried repeatedly to dismiss, was that whatever good and evil existed in the world came from within themselves and not from some abstract source.”

“Herein lies the heart and soul of the nations.Their right to be free men,Their desire to live in peace,Their courage to seek out truth,Herein lies the Sword of Shannara.”

“I am incomplete without my work. I am so closely bound to it, so much identified by it, that without it I think I would crumble into dust and drift away.”

“It's better to die in pursuit of your dreams than to live a life without hope.”

“Fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.”

“Might have, could have, may have, should have—the haves and have nots reduced to pointless possibilities.”

“Let the stillness be, High Lord. Do not disturb it. If you are able, listen to its voice—but let it be.”

“There are many forms of magic in this world, High Lord. Some come in large packages, some in small. Some work with fire and strength of body and heard ... and some work with revelation.”

“Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.”

“If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.”

“You shouldn't believe everything you hear you're young, not stupid.”

“The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you.”

“If I have the means, I have the responsibility to employ them.”

“And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone. p96”

“Faith, Princess," the Prism Cat repeated. "It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.”

“We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.”

“When you can do that, little Wren, when you can accept the wearing down and the eroding, then you can do anything. How did I manage to keep going out nights? I just told myself I didn’t matter all that much—that those in here mattered more. You know something? It’s not so hard really. You just have to get past the fear.”

“Let me tell you something you haven’t learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events—they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn’t have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don’t even notice at first, and then one day it’s there. You wake up and you just don’t have the fire anymore.” He smiled...”

“No one said anything. The midday heat beat down on them, baking their bodies within the oven of clothes long since gone stiff with sweat and dirt, their minds as tired as their expectations. Hawk couldn't remember his last real bath. None of them had done more than wash off a little dirt and cool down their faces at the end of each day's trek since they had set out. Before that, things hadn't been much better. Food was growing scarce, too. Time was as thin as hope.”

“If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.”

“...[Y]ou have an inner strength that makes it possible for you to do things other people couldn't even begin to think of doing.”

“He had never been in love. He had not known what it would feel like. He understood what the term meant, but his life had not allowed for exploring its possibilities. There had been few he had really loved. His parents; Michael. That was it. And that was love of a different kind. Less intense, less hungry. What he felt for Simralin went so far beyond anything manageable that it shocked him. He could tell himself it was because he had found her beautiful in a way that transcended anything he had ever known. But his attraction to her was a response to so much more. To her self-confidence and way of speaking. To her smile and the quirky way she lifted one eyebrow when she was amused. To the way she carried herself. To the way she looked at him.”

“You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.”

“When she cried, he would say, "there is nothing wrong with crying. Your feelings tell you who are. They tell what is important. Don't ever be ashamed of them.”

“Evil contained is not evil destroyed.”

“What you write chooses you.”

“She has her gown nicely in place tonight, doesn't she? Black velvet and sparkles, not a thread left hanging. Clever girl, this city. Even the sky is her friend.”

“Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing.Visions born of hope give birth to our success.What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.”

“Cats can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to what anyone says or does. Rather like Princesses.”

“What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that is what we have to sustain us in our endevors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.”

“We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89”

“We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.”

“Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.”

“Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger. Travel too far that road and the way is lost.”

“Who would you be but who you are?”