Top 160 Juliet Marillier Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “In the old tales, when people undertake quests, they find themselves fighting dragons or serpents or giant dogs. Or maybe a dark warrior of some kind, folk who are enemies from the start. But it’s far more frightening when someone seems friendly and good, and turns out to be different altogether. The odd and uncanny are not terrifying in themselves. The most disturbing thing is the ordinary turned strange. Things familiar and safe becoming not right.”

— Juliet Marillier

52. “I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond – the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one’s life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act.”

— Juliet Marillier

53. “The most reasonable of requests felt burdensome if a person had no choice in the matter.”

— Juliet Marillier

54. “Look forward, not back,” the Hag said. “All is change. Do not regret. Instead, learn.”

— Juliet Marillier

55. “But there are two sides to every fight. It starts from something small, a chance remark, a gesture made lightly. It grows from there. Both sides can be unjust. Both can be cruel.”

— Juliet Marillier

56. “Only – only that, if you believe the tales, it’s in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole.”

— Juliet Marillier

57. “The god honors the faithful. And who is more true than a man who keeps his oath, though it breaks his heart?”

— Juliet Marillier

58. “But if you remove a tyrant in anything other than an open and visible way, another tyrant soon stands up to replace him.”

— Juliet Marillier

59. “Letters tell the truths a person will not speak. They contain the deepest of feelings, the wisest of stories. Letters are powerful. They contain messages of hope, love, change.”

— Juliet Marillier

60. “Best face your fears straightaway; putting things off only makes them harder.”

— Juliet Marillier

61. “Not all were joyful tales; we needed to acknowledge that love was not just kisses, smiles, and fulfillment, but also sacrifice, compromise, and hard work.”

— Juliet Marillier

62. “Each of us wore our memories of what might have been.”

— Juliet Marillier

63. “A story could lead you into a different world for a while. It might be a world where a foolish youngest son could turn into a brave and clever hero, or a beaten young woman could end up as a wise leader of folk. And when the story was ended and that world was gone, you still had the idea of it inside you. Like a flame that didn’t go out even when the bad things rattled and swirled and screamed, and worse, oh, much worse, when they whispered and goaded and tormented.”

— Juliet Marillier

64. “It is surely better to have had such a love and lost it than never to have known the joy of it at all.”

— Juliet Marillier

65. “Trust can be a hard lesson; hope still more difficult.”

— Juliet Marillier

66. “Stronger than iron crueler than death sweeter than springtime it lives beyond breath.”

— Juliet Marillier

67. “Third person allows a deeper exploration of the relationships between characters. We can see their misunderstandings and hear what they think about each other. We can create a more complex structure with various story threads running parallel.”

— Juliet Marillier

68. “I wanted so much to keep you safe. I did my best. I’m sorry things didn’t come out different for the two of us. I wish I could have been good enough for you.”

— Juliet Marillier

69. “I know it’s hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I’ll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.”

— Juliet Marillier

70. “Breath of the winds; dancing flame; peace of the earth; song of the waves.”

— Juliet Marillier

71. “You will find the way, daughter of the forest. Through grief and pain, through many trials, through betrayal and loss, your feet will walk a straight path.”

— Juliet Marillier

72. “She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.”

— Juliet Marillier

73. “His eyes reflected the open grey of the autumnal sky.”

— Juliet Marillier

74. “Can this be love that twists and tears the heart so? Does love give nothing but the power to hurt each other? Is this what makes the simplest touch blend longing and terror in equal measure? Whatever this is, it feels like a mortal wound.”

— Juliet Marillier

75. “More like some small, fierce bird of prey, something with a sharp bite. An owl perhaps, that speaks only when the rest of the world sleeps. Jenny will do well enough.”

— Juliet Marillier

76. “Nobody expects you to exhibit godlike strength, excepting maybe yourself.”

— Juliet Marillier

77. “He was sitting not far away, watching me, and I surprised a smile on his face, the first real smile I had ever seen him give, a smile that curved and softened the tight mouth, and warmed the ice-cool eyes; a smile that brought the blood to my face and made my heart turn over.”

— Juliet Marillier

78. “Somewhere, beneath that darkness, I had seen both strength and honor. But his words of despair mocked my efforts at healing.”

— Juliet Marillier

79. “I thought of betrayal and how it came so easily – in a word, a glance, a gesture.”

— Juliet Marillier

80. “You don’t like it that I am the one you need to keep the wolf from the door; that comes as no surprise. But I am the one you have. At some point we’ll both have to risk telling the truth.”

— Juliet Marillier

81. “You know not, yet, the sort of love that strikes like a lightning bold; that clutches hold of you by the heart, as irrevocably as death; that becomes the lodestar by which you steer the rest of your life.”

— Juliet Marillier

82. “I had learned how it felt to want more than the sweet touch of hand to cheek or lips to palm, more than a kiss, more than an embrace. I was starting to discover that it is not only the mind that understands love, but also the body.”

— Juliet Marillier

83. “There was so much of beauty here: the neat, small tracks of a foraging creature, stoat or marten; the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been.”

— Juliet Marillier

84. “As for me, I had found love, and that was a gift worth suffering for.”

— Juliet Marillier

85. “And as I watched him, I knew that in every dark night there was, somewhere, a small light burning that could never be quenched.”

— Juliet Marillier

86. “There is no truth on this island of yours. Rather, there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky; and every one of them different.”

— Juliet Marillier

87. “I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.”

— Juliet Marillier

88. “His thoughts inhabit a different plane from those of ordinary men; the simplest interpretation of that is to call him crazy.”

— Juliet Marillier

89. “Because if I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens, none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours.”

— Juliet Marillier

90. “This was a familiar feeling, for there were many places in the great forest where you could drink in its energy, become one with its ancient heart. When you were in trouble, you could find your way in these places.”

— Juliet Marillier

91. “The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit.”

— Juliet Marillier

92. “How can he do this? If you were mine, I would fight to keep you. I would die, before I let you go.”

— Juliet Marillier

93. “I saw that in him she had found her sun and moon, her stars and her dreams. Sorrow.”

— Juliet Marillier

94. “There’s a light shining in him, moving him forward: the light of freedom. That’s what draws all of us to follow, to take risks, to keep on fighting when we see our comrades fall beside us. But there’s no light without shadow.”

— Juliet Marillier

95. “I’ve loved fairytales, folklore and mythology since I was a small child, and I think it was inevitable that they would influence my style and my development of stories.”

— Juliet Marillier

96. “He would have told her – he would have said, it matters not if you are here or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are – you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.”

— Juliet Marillier

97. “Dawn will come,’ I told him quietly. ‘The night can be very dark; but I’ll stay by you until the sun rises. These shadows cannot touch you while I am here. Soon we’ll see the first hint of grey in the sky, the color of a pigeon’s coat, then the smallest touch of the sun’s finger, and one bird will be bold enough to wake first and sing of tall trees and open skies and freedom. Then all will brighten and color will wash across the earth and it will be a new day. I will stay with you, until then.”

— Juliet Marillier

98. “Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive.”

— Juliet Marillier

99. “I cannot expiate my sin, yet I am compelled to try. My mind will not let me rest. There must be something I could have done, some way I could have acted, something I could have changed to snatch victory from bitter defeat.”

— Juliet Marillier

100. “For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”

— Juliet Marillier