Top 90 Erika Johansen Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “One night she’d stayed up until dawn reading a particularly long novel, and she had been allowed to skip her chores and sleep away most of the next day.”

— Erika Johansen

52. “Our species is capable of altruism, certainly, but it is not a game we play willingly, let alone well.”

— Erika Johansen

53. “Always, we think we know what courage means. If I were called upon, we say, I would answer the call. I would not hesitate. Until the moment is upon us, and then we realize that the demands of true courage are very different from what we had envisioned, long ago on that bright morning when we felt brave.”

— Erika Johansen

54. “The Queen held up her hands for silence. At that moment, Javel knew for certain that she truly was the Queen, though he never knew why or how he knew.”

— Erika Johansen

55. “Carlin would like to see this: her library in use by a community of readers, an oasis in an entire nation starved for books. No, not even starved, Kelsea thought grimly. The Tearling was like a man who hadn’t eaten in so long that he didn’t even remember what it was like to be hungry anymore. The spark of an idea ignited in her mind, then danced away. Pen.”

— Erika Johansen

56. “The Fetch had belonged to God’s Church long enough to know that the carnage before him was nothing to do with God, or good. Brutality found such great camouflage under the cross.”

— Erika Johansen

57. “You win your people or you lose your throne.”

— Erika Johansen

58. “I see this land flowing with books, Father. Widespread literacy. Books everywhere, as common as they used to be in circulation before the Crossing, affordable even for the poor.”

— Erika Johansen

59. “We don’t always choose, Majesty. We simply make the best choices we can once the deed is done.”

— Erika Johansen

60. “I see this land flowing with books, Father. Widespread literacy.”

— Erika Johansen

61. “I am the Queen of the Tearling! Open the cages! – Kelsea.”

— Erika Johansen

62. “A church was only as good or bad as the philosophy that emanated from the pulpit.”

— Erika Johansen

63. “Hell? Hell is a fairy tale for the gullible, for what punishment could be worse than that we inflict upon ourselves? We burn so badly in this life that there can be nothing left.”

— Erika Johansen

64. “She did not take offense; adults lied all the time, their reasons often as silly as those of children.”

— Erika Johansen

65. “Carlin always said that most men were dogs, and Kelsea had never taken her seriously; there were too many good books written by men.”

— Erika Johansen

66. “This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to anything they want, anything they can grab.”

— Erika Johansen

67. “Rulers who attempt to control an unwilling populace govern nothing, and often find their heads atop a pike to boot.”

— Erika Johansen

68. “Weakness, all the more dangerous for being combined with a sense of entitlement.”

— Erika Johansen

69. “The hawk ripped out his jugular, spraying the morning sunlight with a fine mist of blood.”

— Erika Johansen

70. “Carlin often said that history was everything, for it was in man’s nature to make the same mistakes over and over.”

— Erika Johansen

71. “Some people were simply broken, something inside them grown wrong and twisted.”

— Erika Johansen

72. “Stick with hard copies; they’re harder to alter after publication. In the better world, there won’t be any electronics at all.”

— Erika Johansen

73. “They’re good, these stories,” Mace continued, his cheeks stained with light color. “They teach the pain of others.” “Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers.”

— Erika Johansen

74. “She looked at the land around her, the deep amber of the wheat cut by the yellow line of the road, and wished that she could make it a softer world.”

— Erika Johansen

75. “Katie preferred honesty, even at the expense of civility. She longed to have everything in the open.”

— Erika Johansen

76. “If we could be better people,” she would say, “if we could care about each other as much as we do about ourselves, think about it, Lily! Think what the world would be!”

— Erika Johansen

77. “Lady, if you don’t wake up, I’m going to have you baptized.”

— Erika Johansen

78. “Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It.”

— Erika Johansen

79. “This is how women are trained to stay indoors, she thought, the idea echoing in her mind like a gravesong. This is how women are trained not to act.”

— Erika Johansen

80. “She was Kelsea Glynn, a girl who’d grown up in the forest, who loved to study history and read fiction. But she was something else, something more than Kelsea, and so she remained there for a moment longer, watching over her country, straining to see the danger beyond the horizon.”

— Erika Johansen

81. “It’s all right lady,” Pen murmured. “I won’t let you fall.”

— Erika Johansen

82. “Whenever she had a problem to consider, she invariably found herself in the library, for it was easier to think when she was surrounded by books.”

— Erika Johansen

83. “The future cannot be divorced from the past.”

— Erika Johansen

84. “But even Carlin’s words had no weight when fury washed over Kelsea; it was a tide that cleared all obstacles.”

— Erika Johansen

85. “Beware the past, Kelsea. Be a steward.”

— Erika Johansen

86. “Those who cease to worry about their souls often find them difficult to reclaim later.”

— Erika Johansen

87. “The Fetch was intelligent, diabolically so, and intelligent people devised intelligent cruelties. That was where the Red Queen had always excelled.”

— Erika Johansen

88. “Love was a real thing, Aisa thought, but secondary. Certainly love was not as real as her sword.”

— Erika Johansen

89. “The Tearling... I told them not to name things after me. – William Tear.”

— Erika Johansen

90. “Tyler had seen village dogs trained in much the same way for the ring. When an animal was beaten hard enough, it would work just to not be beaten, and consider itself well rewarded. The status quo could shift at any time.”

— Erika Johansen

91. “Stories moved Kelsea most, stories of things that never were, stories that transported her beyond the changeless world of the cottage.”

— Erika Johansen

92. “She had been ready to kill Da, ready for years, but now she was amazed to find that she had done something even more difficult: she had spoken aloud.”

— Erika Johansen