Top 350 Mary E. Pearson Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I was becoming stronger in some ways but weaker in others.”

— Mary E. Pearson

202. “I looked at her face, gently illuminated by the distant light of the tavern. Even with her brows pulled low and an anguished crease between them, she was beautiful. It was a strange thing to think at the moment. I had deliberately avoided the thought each time I had looked at her before. I couldn’t afford such thoughts, but now the word came, unbidden, unrelenting. I.”

— Mary E. Pearson

203. “For Walther. For Greta. For all the dreams that were gone. The stealer of dreams would steal no more, even if it meant killing the Komizar myself. My own mother may have betrayed me by suppressing my gift, but she was right about one thing. I am a soldier in my father’s army. I glanced up at Kaden riding beside me. Maybe now it was I who would become the assassin.”

— Mary E. Pearson

204. “But then why take her all the way to Venda? Ransom?” Tavish interjected. “What was his purpose in taking her?” I remembered how Kaden had looked at her that very first night, a panther on a doe, and how he had looked at her every day after that. I didn’t answer Tavish, and maybe my silence was answer enough. There was a long pause and then Orrin belched. “We’ll get my future queen back,” he said, “then we’ll skewer all their bloody jewels on a stick.” And.”

— Mary E. Pearson

205. “May the good grant you a still heart, heavy eyes, and angels guarding at your door.”

— Mary E. Pearson

206. “They looked shallow, self-absorbed. And a small, strangled part of me envied them.”

— Mary E. Pearson

207. “It doesn’t always take an army to save the world. Sometimes it takes just one person who won’t let evil win.”

— Mary E. Pearson

208. “I could only hope he’d be called up soon to return to his regiment, and if the gods be just, kicked in the head by a horse.”

— Mary E. Pearson

209. “I was afraid of all the lost choices I would never be able to make, and that for the rest of my life someone would always be telling me what to do or say or think, even when I had better ideas of my own. I was afraid of never being anything but what suited others and being pushed and prodded until I fit the mold they shoved me into and I forgot who I was and what I wanted.”

— Mary E. Pearson

210. “I’ll take a game of cards to stitchery any day. My brothers are shrewd, bordering on thieves when it comes to their cards – the best kind of teachers to have. Last.”

— Mary E. Pearson

211. “Do not sacrifice one kind of strength for another.”

— Mary E. Pearson

212. “Doubt was a poison I couldn’t afford to sip.”

— Mary E. Pearson

213. “I hated things being for the best. They never really were. It was a phrase that sugarcoated the leftover crumbs of our options.”

— Mary E. Pearson

214. “What good would one last good-bye do? Wouldn’t it just prolong the pain?”

— Mary E. Pearson

215. “We talked about it. Love. Was that what this was? I love you, Jafir, she would say at any moment of the day, just to hear it said aloud. She would laugh and then say it again, her eyes solemn, looking into mine. I love you, Jafir de Aldrid. And it didn’t matter how many times she said it, I waited for her to say it again.”

— Mary E. Pearson

216. “Killing is different from thinking about killing.”

— Mary E. Pearson

217. “No matter how great a gift or skill, it’s impossible to foresee every outcome.”

— Mary E. Pearson

218. “I knew why he chose the brown. It was the plainest of my dresses, certainly drab in his eyes, but all the better to contrast and showcase the red he’d have me wear tomorrow. I had no doubt he’d ordered the snow itself as the perfect backdrop, and surely he’d ordered the sun to shine in the morning so as not to deter the crowds.”

— Mary E. Pearson

219. “It had been a clever deception from the very beginning.”

— Mary E. Pearson

220. “I wondered if she was truly Rahtan. Yes, she was skilled, but she didn’t exactly possess brawn – even if she had managed to overtake me and slam me up against the wall. But juggling? Riddles? Her age. Her poise and demeanor was that of a cynical tested soldier, but her appearance – she was young, younger than me, I was certain. Her black hair fell in thick, long waves, and her hands were delicate, her fingers more suited for a piano than a sword.”

— Mary E. Pearson

221. “This world, it breathes you in, sniffs, it knows you, and then it breathes you out again, shares you. You’re not contained here in this single place alone. The wind, time, it circles, repeats, teaches, reveals, some swaths cutting deeper than others. The universe knows. The universe has a long memory.”

— Mary E. Pearson

222. “The rules of reason build towers that reach past the treetops. The rules of trust build towers that reach past the stars.”

— Mary E. Pearson

223. “I didn’t think about his world or mine or the future we couldn’t have. I only thought about the warm light behind my eyelids, his soft murmurs in my ear, and the fullness of what we had in that moment. And we touched in all the ways of yesterday and more.”

— Mary E. Pearson

224. “I know what it feels like to have my choices taken away. I pray no daughter of your kingdom will ever have to fight for her voice to be heard as I have had to do.”

— Mary E. Pearson

225. “Some truths refused to be hidden.”

— Mary E. Pearson

226. “Of course you did.” I took a step closer. “You have strengths, Tavish, that I greatly admire. You’re skills helped saved Rafe’s and my lives, for which I’ll always be indebted to you. But there are other kinds of strength too. Quiet, gentle ones that are just as valuable, even if you don’t entirely understand them.”

— Mary E. Pearson

227. “My strengths are not your strengths.”

— Mary E. Pearson

228. “Eyes don’t breath. I know that much. But hers look breathless.”

— Mary E. Pearson

229. “But you’re everything I want. Remember that. I love you, Lia. Not a title. And not because a piece of paper says I should. Because I do.”

— Mary E. Pearson

230. “Their voices meld into a cloudy rumble of their own, and I ponder Mira’s and Aidan’s secrets and imagine the injustice that threads through other lives, injustice that has no face because it is hidden away in a dark, shameful place, hidden for years in hopes of making it untrue.”

— Mary E. Pearson

231. “As we got older, their mischiefs continued to be shrugged off, but mine were not, and I knew from that point that I was measured from a different stick than my brothers.”

— Mary E. Pearson

232. “Could anyone really travel so far that they might not find their way home again?”

— Mary E. Pearson

233. “And I began walking. A thousand miles, or two, I would carry her all the way to Dalbreck if I had to. No one would pry her from my arms again.”

— Mary E. Pearson

234. “My anger spiked. I should have stabbed the Komizar again. Carved him up like a holiday goose, then brought his head back skewered on a sword and showed it to the crowds as proof that I had no love for the tyrant.”

— Mary E. Pearson

235. “Desperation grew teeth. Claws. It became an animal inside me that knew no bounds, unspeakable, just as Jafir had tried to explain to me so long ago. It tore open my darkest thoughts, letting them unfurl like black wings.”

— Mary E. Pearson

236. “Possibility became a winged creature that could take me anywhere I asked.”

— Mary E. Pearson

237. “He settled into his saddle, then reluctantly looked my way again. “Jafir de Aldrid,” he answered. “And I am – ” “I know who you are. You’re Morrighan.” He galloped off. It was another four years before I saw him again, and the whole of that time, I wondered how he knew my name.”

— Mary E. Pearson

238. “Sometimes it’s the smallest and most innocent things you have to watch out for.”

— Mary E. Pearson

239. “The scrutiny was smothering. Right now it seemed that being Vendan within these outpost walls was preferable to being the impudent royal who had abandoned their precious prince at the altar.”

— Mary E. Pearson

240. “The room closed in, dark and black and far from everything I had ever known. I felt like a child again, wishing I could curl into my mother’s arms on a stormy night and she could whisper away my fears. The wind punched and thrashed against the shutters, unforgiving, and I felt something wet trickle down the side of my face. I reached up and swiped the salty wetness away. How quaint. How very quaint. Like believing some things last forever. A tear. As if that could make a difference.”

— Mary E. Pearson

241. “It is hard to find reason when you’re being torn in two.”

— Mary E. Pearson

242. “The angels threw glitter up there, just for you, Zoe, Daddy had told her. They celebrated almost as much as I did the day you were born. Every time you look up there you remember how special you are – so special the angels threw a big party.”

— Mary E. Pearson

243. “Pauline frowned. “But you’re not a soldier, Lia. You’re his daughter. You had no choice, and that meant I had no choice. No one should be forced to marry someone they don’t love.” She lay back, gazing up at the stars and wrinkling her nose. “Especially not some old stuffy, puffy prince.” We broke into giggles again, and more than the air I breathed, I was thankful for Pauline.”

— Mary E. Pearson

244. “Choice is powerful and can lead to great things if not held in the tight fists of a few.”

— Mary E. Pearson

245. “If I had been shipped off to Dalbreck, there are valuable things I never would have learned.”

— Mary E. Pearson

246. “I wondered at the way we all change, all the outside forces that press and mold and push us into people and things we hadn’t planned to be. Maybe it happened so gradually that by the time we noticed, it was too late to be anything else.”

— Mary E. Pearson

247. “You are not letting me go anywhere. Where I go and what I do is still my choice to make.”

— Mary E. Pearson

248. “It is good to have many strengths, Natiya... Do not sacrifice one kind of strength for another.”

— Mary E. Pearson

249. “Even we are guilty of not nurturing gifts, and the gifts that aren’t fed shrivel and die.”

— Mary E. Pearson

250. “The magic of the wishes, of course, was simply in making them, fishing deep for a hidden desire, molding it into words to make it real, and tossing it into a mysterious unknown that you believed was maybe, just maybe, listening.”

— Mary E. Pearson