Top 160 Jacqueline Carey Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “We might embody those qualities we desire to possess by embracing them, over and over, until the line between seeming and being is no more.”

— Jacqueline Carey

102. “Wind will blow through any chink it can find, flow around any obstacle in its course. Follow the wind’s example and let it guide you into those spaces.”

— Jacqueline Carey

103. “Joscelin, is love supposed to make you feel like you’re sick and dying, and mad enough to hit someone and drunk with joy, and your heart’s a boulder n your chest trying to burst into a thousand pieces all at once?” “Mm-hmm.” He finished his ale. “That would be love.”

— Jacqueline Carey

104. “It is not everyday that one learns an entire militia has sworn unbeknownest to obey you.”

— Jacqueline Carey

105. “A little truth seasons a lie like salt.”

— Jacqueline Carey

106. “It is not wise to meddle with D’Angelines in matters of love.”

— Jacqueline Carey

107. “In the general course of things, when beauty passes, the flower bows its head upon the stem and fails. Sometimes, though, when the petals droop, a framework of tempered steel is revealed within.”

— Jacqueline Carey

108. “No two sacrifices are the same, and yet all are, in the end. It is the commitment to belong, wholly, to that which claims one.”

— Jacqueline Carey

109. “I can see patterns in events, and behaviors; in mathematics, I follow slower.”

— Jacqueline Carey

110. “Feeling foolish, I scowled at her. “Does it amuse you to mock me, my lady?” “A little.” Refreshed by sleep, her eyes sparkled unrepentantly. “You are so very serious, my shadow.”

— Jacqueline Carey

111. “It seems to me that the gods are cruel to women who eat fruit, but that is a thought I keep to myself.”

— Jacqueline Carey

112. “It went well enough at first. One need not be able to name a danger to sense and avoid it.”

— Jacqueline Carey

113. “Questions are dangerous because they have answers.”

— Jacqueline Carey

114. “Let him be a boy while he may. It is too soon for him to wrestle with mortality.”

— Jacqueline Carey

115. “Her always is mine.”

— Jacqueline Carey

116. “In the desert we say Make haste slowly.”

— Jacqueline Carey

117. “There is no folly like the folly of the wise.”

— Jacqueline Carey

118. “Some chains are forged for us – those are the hardest to bear.”

— Jacqueline Carey

119. “Poetry glories in excess. When it’s not extolling the virtues of austerity.”

— Jacqueline Carey

120. “If the greatest danger one faces as a slave is displeasing one’s masters, this is the second: pleasing them.”

— Jacqueline Carey

121. “He would welcome the opportunity to offer his suffering up to God. Me, I could not help but think that there was more than enough suffering in the world without adding to the balance.”

— Jacqueline Carey

122. “The harp sounds at each passing breeze, but that does not mean the tune is masterfully played.”

— Jacqueline Carey

123. “She was oh, so very beautiful to me, and her strength and courage and daring vulnerability only made her the more so.”

— Jacqueline Carey

124. “All this I knew, and yet it was a different thing, to learn it from Delaunay: not stories, but histories. For this too I learned, that a storyteller’s tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day. When I understood this, Delaunay said, I might begin to understand.”

— Jacqueline Carey

125. “To fail and persevere is a harder test than any you will meet on the practice-field.”

— Jacqueline Carey

126. “There are others. There will be others. Other heroes, other heroines. Other prophecies to fulfill, other adversaries to despise. There will be stories told and forgotten, and reinvented anew until one day, perhaps, the oldest are remembered, and the beginning may end, and the ending begin.”

— Jacqueline Carey

127. “And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.”

— Jacqueline Carey

128. “Jahno asked with a stymied scholar’s anguish.”

— Jacqueline Carey

129. “Always, he whispered. The gods do not always answer, but they are always listening.”

— Jacqueline Carey

130. “A small kindness, a confluence of compassion, had saved his life. Was that strength, or a weakness?”

— Jacqueline Carey

131. “The world began in ending, and it will end in beginning.”

— Jacqueline Carey

132. “He is searching for an answer for which no question exists.”

— Jacqueline Carey

133. “I was not going to be killed by a gods-bedamned caterpillar.”

— Jacqueline Carey

134. “Is the world so cruel, then, that that is all that is required to move a man to risk his life? Kindness?”

— Jacqueline Carey

135. “I never forgot, never, that it had been he who, with two words, turned my deadliest flaw to a treasure beyond price.”

— Jacqueline Carey

136. “Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force.”

— Jacqueline Carey

137. “A pretty sight; it would have surprised me, if my capacity for surprise wasn’t flattened.”

— Jacqueline Carey

138. “You sang the seas calm, and you drove the Dalriada to war, whatever it took. They know that. That’s why they adore you. But everyone needs to laugh in the face of death. They’re following an anguissette into battle. Give them credit for seeing the absurdity of it. You’ve been dwelling on it long enough.”

— Jacqueline Carey

139. “It is what I do. If you wish to thank me, do a kindness for someone in need.”

— Jacqueline Carey

140. “Victory doesn’t matter to the dead, nor to the living who mourn them.”

— Jacqueline Carey

141. “For this too I learned, that a storyteller’s tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day.”

— Jacqueline Carey

142. “We are alike, Joscelin and I, in that what we do, we do very well.”

— Jacqueline Carey

143. “But to force growth is to kill it.”

— Jacqueline Carey

144. “But it’s a lot easier to blame someone else than accept blame for your own failings.”

— Jacqueline Carey

145. “I could kill you in a dozen different ways without breaking a sweat. Do not think to dictate my comings and goings.”

— Jacqueline Carey

146. “My taste is for spices, and not sweets.”

— Jacqueline Carey

147. “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. Tonight I am afraid, but I take heart from the love I bear for each of you, and for our beloved brother Keeik, whose sacrifice we grieve and honor. For your sakes, I abide. For you, I endure. And when I bear this in mind, this baseless fear loses its power over me. Remember this.”

— Jacqueline Carey

148. “We must share our knowledge, share our strengths and weakness, share the burden of danger and the rewards of victory.”

— Jacqueline Carey

149. “Tis a lonely business, being miserable when happiness abounds. I did my best to hide it, although the people who knew me well, knew.”

— Jacqueline Carey

150. “Would that I could make of heart and soul something other than a battleground!”

— Jacqueline Carey