Top 160 Jacqueline Carey Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one’s own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.”

— Jacqueline Carey

52. “But slight mistakes accumulate, and grow to gross errors if unchecked.”

— Jacqueline Carey

53. “Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.”

— Jacqueline Carey

54. “Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one’s homeland.”

— Jacqueline Carey

55. “The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart.”

— Jacqueline Carey

56. “True friendship must be akin to romance, I think. only without all the anguish and anxiety.”

— Jacqueline Carey

57. “Genius requires an audience.”

— Jacqueline Carey

58. “Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.”

— Jacqueline Carey

59. “And for a price, I will pretend absolutely nothing.”

— Jacqueline Carey

60. “Ci sono persone che si sentono in imbarazzo di fronte al dolore altrui e temono di dire la cosa sbagliata; a costoro dico che non si sbaglia nell’offrire conforto, mai. Una parola gentile, un abbraccio consolatorio... queste cose sono sempre bene accette.”

— Jacqueline Carey

61. “If you thought better of me, you would not be so surprised.”

— Jacqueline Carey

62. “Only insofar as you enjoy being sorry, my dear, which, while it is a considerable amount, occurs only after the fact, thus making it a singularly ineffective deterrent, yes?”

— Jacqueline Carey

63. “If I had to fall from Cassiel’s grace, at least I know it took a courtesan worthy of Kings to do it.”

— Jacqueline Carey

64. “Well, I was living it, but a shared dream half-lived is a hollow thing.”

— Jacqueline Carey

65. “Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is as inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.”

— Jacqueline Carey

66. “And Kushiel sends no punishment that we are not fit to bear.”

— Jacqueline Carey

67. “Are you a minor character in my tale, or am I a lesser figure in yours?”

— Jacqueline Carey

68. “So I leave flowers; spring flowers, then summer flowers. I gather the red and orange and yellow trumpet flowers, for a trumpet is a thing that makes a loud noise like a shout, and I tie their vines together and leave them to shout I love you in a row from Miranda’s window-ledge.”

— Jacqueline Carey

69. “Vampire in real life aren’t like the ones in the movies. They weren’t going to be playing baseball in a thunderstorm.”

— Jacqueline Carey

70. “We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on.”

— Jacqueline Carey

71. “This is the secret that none dares tell who fights for a cause. Dying, we are all alike.”

— Jacqueline Carey

72. “It’s funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.”

— Jacqueline Carey

73. “Years ago, I had a teacher who taught me that all ways lead to the Way,” I said slowly, thinking. “That there is a great truth behind all the truths of the world, and the faces of the gods are masks that may be changed at will.”

— Jacqueline Carey

74. “To recongnize that the treachery of one member of a house does not taint all born within it.”

— Jacqueline Carey

75. “I would that I could have stopped time and preserved that day forever. It was a perfect day. There was the shadow of sorrow, yes. It would always be there. But that was the nature of life. The bright mirror and the dark, reflecting one another. And today there was so much brightness.”

— Jacqueline Carey

76. “It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others.”

— Jacqueline Carey

77. “Night breeds its own sort of anticipation.”

— Jacqueline Carey

78. “It’s funny how despair can soon become an old companion.”

— Jacqueline Carey

79. “Clearly, Im drawn to characters with inner conflicts.”

— Jacqueline Carey

80. “The enemy of fear is not courage,” Jahno translated for her. “The enemy of fear is love, for it is in loving others that we set aside our own personal fears, holding their safety and well-being as our highest regard.”

— Jacqueline Carey

81. “I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.”

— Jacqueline Carey

82. “They are fools, who reckon Elua a soft god, fit only for the worship of starry-eyed lovers. Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is as inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in it’s wake.”

— Jacqueline Carey

83. “Tell me, my heart, would you rather wed a handsome man or a wealthy one?” Zariya considered the question. “If I had the luxury of choice, I would choose a kind man.”

— Jacqueline Carey

84. “I seek words of such surpassing beauty that they might melt the hardest heart of stone.”

— Jacqueline Carey

85. “I cannot blame them, in truth, for desiring... But they were like children, who have only just begun to grasp the idea of a thing. And like children, they had no notion of laboring to create, but only of having... and no thought given to the cost, to others, of taking it.”

— Jacqueline Carey

86. “As often as not, we forge our own chains. And from those, not even Adonai Himself can free us. We must do it ourselves.”

— Jacqueline Carey

87. “I love you, and I would choose to be with you whether in a slum or a cave or a palace.”

— Jacqueline Carey

88. “It is human nature, to give in hope of getting.”

— Jacqueline Carey

89. “What she referenced with such careless ease seemed a world-shattering notion to me.”

— Jacqueline Carey

90. “In love, howsoever it is manifest, we are greater than the sum of our parts.”

— Jacqueline Carey

91. “Stupid to speak of blame when the wills of the immortals are involved.”

— Jacqueline Carey

92. “We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.”

— Jacqueline Carey

93. “Betimes I have heard people bewail the fact that our destinies are shrouded in mystery; I think, though, that it is a blessing of sorts. Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.”

— Jacqueline Carey

94. “I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer.”

— Jacqueline Carey

95. “There is as much deception in noise as there is in silence.”

— Jacqueline Carey

96. “Men will heed words spoken from one in a position of authority that they disdain from other sources.”

— Jacqueline Carey

97. “It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one’s own identity.”

— Jacqueline Carey

98. “Thou art the shoals on which Caliban wilt dash his heart to pieces.”

— Jacqueline Carey

99. “It must sound, I know, as if I had no pity for him; it wasn’t true. I was angry because I was terrified. But there are times when a curse is more bracing than an endearment.”

— Jacqueline Carey

100. “Wars come and go; politics endure.”

— Jacqueline Carey