Top 60 Elizabeth May Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Amateurs built the Ark; Professionals built the Titanic.”

— Elizabeth May

2. “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.”

— Elizabeth May

3. “Those who take action have a disproportionate impact. The power of one is to move many.”

— Elizabeth May

4. “I’m not a creature of vengeance any more. I’m not just the girl whose gift is chaos. I’m the girl who endured.”

— Elizabeth May

5. “We have to do what we have to do. Miracles happen. The life force of this planet is very strong. Dandelions poke through sidewalks. We don’t know enough to give up. We only know enough to know that we have to try to change the course of human events.”

— Elizabeth May

6. “I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap – as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote.”

— Elizabeth May

7. “The price you pay for truth is knowledge.”

— Elizabeth May

8. “We burn bright, and we burn out. That’s what it means to be human.”

— Elizabeth May

9. “When Dante described the circles of Hell, he clearly forgot the one where a hungry pixie sits on one’s shoulder for eternity.”

— Elizabeth May

10. “It’s so quiet out here, only ocean waves crashing around us. It’s these moments when I realise that my time with Kiaran is such a fragile thing. At any moment, my human life could end and he’d still be as unchanging as the sea.”

— Elizabeth May

11. “One day, you’ll tell people the story of the faery king and the human girl. And how he watched from afar as she lived out twenty thousand human days. And if she listened closely during winter, when the wind was cold and the nights were longest, she could hear him whisper that he cherished her so much he was willing to give her the world.”

— Elizabeth May

12. “There is not enough tea in the world to calm me.”

— Elizabeth May

13. “Aoram dhuit,” he breathes. “I will worship thee.”

— Elizabeth May

14. “Kiaran left a mark on me. It’s not physical, not like Lonnrach’s. It’s as if when my memories were emptied, my mind filled with pieces of Kiaran, feelings that kept me sane in the mirrored room. He did it without realizing and I let him without realizing. God, how I wish I hadn’t.”

— Elizabeth May

15. “He loved you so much that when you died, he might as well have died with you.”

— Elizabeth May

16. “I’m immortal. You consider the future because one day you’ll die. I don’t have that uncertainty.” – Kiaran.”

— Elizabeth May

17. “Forgiveness isn’t something given... It’s something earned. What could I do to earn it, Aileana? Nothing. – Sorcha.”

— Elizabeth May

18. “You want to know what you mean to me, Kam?’ His lips trail down the curve of my neck.‘Every day I wonder when your human life will end, and it scares the hell out of me. ’ His words are hot on my skin. ‘You make me wish I didn’t have forever.”

— Elizabeth May

19. “You can’t win. Not when you have everything to lose.”

— Elizabeth May

20. “What did you do?’ I whisper to Aithinne. Aithinne pushes to her feet, dusting off her clothes.‘I redirected its blast away from us so it used its weapon on itself. ’ She scans the destruction.‘Easy.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ I murmur, trying to quell the emotions that rush through me at seeing my childhood home destroyed. ‘Simple’s sibling, Easy. I don’t even want to imagine the levels of chaos that would prompt visits from their cousins Straightforward and Uncomplicated.”

— Elizabeth May

21. “Perhaps he’s my curse. Perhaps I’m his weakness. Together we left the world in ruins.”

— Elizabeth May

22. “Time won’t fix me. Time allows me to become more skillful at hiding how much I hurt inside. Time makes me a great liar. Because when it comes to grief, we all like to pretend.”

— Elizabeth May

23. “Just hold back the sea and as many fae as you can. Aithinne and I will do the rest.’ He gives me a look.‘ Just hold back the sea, she says.’ With a shake of his head, he takes his position again, deep in concentration.”

— Elizabeth May

24. “Names hold power, Kam,” he says. “Don’t use that one unless you’d like to see firsthand what it was once capable of.”

— Elizabeth May

25. “He is the faery whose gift is death and I am the girl whose gift is chaos.”

— Elizabeth May

26. “Most people would be dismayed by an attempted assassination, but Kiaran seems to regard it as either flirtation or flattery – possibly both.”

— Elizabeth May

27. “Is she going to cry? I don’t believe I’ve ever made a faery cry before – except Derrick, and that was only while I was reading him A Christmas Carol and Scrooge stopped being a bastard; Derrick said he had something in his eye.”

— Elizabeth May

28. “It was all battles, fights and court. Humans are far more exciting. You have colourful swearwords and cake – – Aithinne.”

— Elizabeth May

29. “Lobsters,” Aithinne says again, just in case I misheard her, and I rather hoped I had. “I hear they’re biologically immortal,” she explains, “and exempt from greed. And they’re funny looking, so I’ve decided they’re my favorite... what do you think of a lobster for a pet?” Aithinne asks suddenly, as if she’s thought long and hard about this.”

— Elizabeth May

30. “He’s in my heart and I’m in his. And I think it’s going to destroy us both.”

— Elizabeth May

31. “What the hell is wrong with your pixie? – Gavin.”

— Elizabeth May

32. “She glances at her brother. “And I suppose your face is just stuck that way?” Kiaran pushes to his feet and I do the same. “What you see is the incessant, grave look of someone in possession of a sibling.”

— Elizabeth May

33. “Kam,” Kiaran says, his eyes never leaving Derrick. “Control your pixie.” “Control me?” A wee blade is suddenly in Derrick’s hand. “I’m going to gut you, you sonofa –.”

— Elizabeth May

34. “You were right, you know. Ours is a talent wasted on the useless. – Gavin, to Kiaran.”

— Elizabeth May

35. “Perfect.” I open the ornithopter door. “We’ve rendered Dona mostly blind and partially disguised her as an old woman for the sake of a bloody walk in a public park.”

— Elizabeth May

36. “The truth is, memories weigh a great deal. Each one bends your bones a little more until the heft of them wears you down. Now I know that some scars go so deep they never fade.”

— Elizabeth May

37. “I know from experience the lies we tell to comfort ourselves, to comfort others, so others never realize how broken we really are.”

— Elizabeth May

38. “A patchwork solution of provincial targets is an admission of defeat and a statement that we have failed our children and grandchildren.”

— Elizabeth May

39. “I feel. I feel. Strong and untouchable and capable. An exquisite glow of joy fills me up and extinguishes my anger. For this instant, I am whole again. I am not broken or empty. The shadow-self inside me that compels me to kill is silent. I am unburdened. I am complete.”

— Elizabeth May

40. “You should never even ask if a campaign is winnable, because the question is not answerable. No-one can predict the course of the future. Time and time again I have seen completely unforeseeable shifts in the tide of events that result in campaign victory.”

— Elizabeth May

41. “You’re only different until the day you’re not.”

— Elizabeth May

42. “I’m going to let my friends in the other parties fight over the turf at the cutting edge of the status quo.”

— Elizabeth May

43. “It’s all right if you smell bad,” Derrick says serenely. “You’re still my favorite.”

— Elizabeth May

44. “Sometimes the memories we cling hardest to are the ones that hurt us the most.”

— Elizabeth May

45. “Here’s how to fulfill a prophecy: you are a woman, you speak the truth, and the world makes you into a liar.”

— Elizabeth May

46. “Somewhere between our hunts and our kills and our kisses, he left his mark on my bones.”

— Elizabeth May

47. “Aithinne seems to shake herself, closing herself off the same way Kiaran does.‘Lots of things.’ She looks over at me then.‘You’re bleeding again.’ Without warning, Aithinne seizes my arm. Before I can ask her what she’s about, she swipes a finger across my arm wound and licks the blood off with a quick dart of her tongue.‘Ahh!’ I stare at her in shock.‘You licked – you just – my god, I want the last five seconds of my life back.”

— Elizabeth May

48. “Is Stephen Harper using the imagined fear of widespread security threats to score political points before the next election?”

— Elizabeth May

49. “I understand now that magic is not for wickedness, not for the devil, not for those with cruel hearts. It’s for hope. For survival. It thrives in the darkness not because it is dark in nature but because the fire shines brightest then.”

— Elizabeth May

50. “As a figment of my imagination, I demand you stop insulting me. – Aileana.”

— Elizabeth May