Top 350 Mary E. Pearson Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

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

— Mary E. Pearson

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

— Mary E. Pearson

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

— Mary E. Pearson

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

— Mary E. Pearson

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

— Mary E. Pearson

258. “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

259. “There were no rules to grief, but there were rules to life, and in those first few days, the requirements of the living demanded I keep going.”

— Mary E. Pearson

260. “The thought weaves into her unexpectedly, as so many thoughts do, time again. How do you make the remembering stop?”

— Mary E. Pearson

261. “I watched her saunter over. It was something about her steps. Her arms crossed in front of her. Her timing. The deliberate casualness of it all. The muscles in my neck tightened. I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Then she smiled, and I knew. Don’t do this, Lia. But I really wasn’t sure just what she was doing. I only knew no good would come of it. I knew the language of Lia. I.”

— Mary E. Pearson

262. “The Komizar rages with enough venom to make your general look like a whimpering kitten.”

— Mary E. Pearson

263. “But last night – I swallowed, remembering how they looked together when I went to check on Lia during the night. I had seen his hand resting on her bed and her hand curled over his. Both of them were asleep, peaceful. I backed out of the room quietly so they wouldn’t see me. Maybe that was what had given me the courage to tell her the truth.”

— Mary E. Pearson

264. “It was our story. It didn’t have to have a happy beginning or a happy ending, but the middle was a feast at a banquet, a rich soapy bath, a night’s rest at an inn and full stomach, a warm chest nestled up against my back, the soft heat of lips at my nape, stories whispered in my ear.”

— Mary E. Pearson

265. “Was this what families did? Bared their souls in front of an entire room of people? Their confessions left me raw. These were the kinds of conversations I didn’t know how to have.”

— Mary E. Pearson

266. “Maybe now it was I who would become the assassin.”

— Mary E. Pearson

267. “Greater stories will have their way.”

— Mary E. Pearson

268. “There were many ways a life could be sacrificed, and it wasn’t always through dying.”

— Mary E. Pearson

269. “Some betrayals ran too deep to ever forgive.”

— Mary E. Pearson

270. “What I think is all I have left. My mind is the only thing that makes me different from a fancy toaster. What we think does matter-it’s all we truly have.”

— Mary E. Pearson

271. “I woke up on the floor of Lia’s wagon and thought she had finally planted an ax in my skull.”

— Mary E. Pearson

272. “She was a natural leader. This was where she needed to be. Letting her go had been the right choice, even if the decision still burned in my gut.”

— Mary E. Pearson

273. “Convince him. I relaxed against his touch and didn’t turn away when his mouth met mine.”

— Mary E. Pearson

274. “I want you to stop being afraid,′ she said gently. ‘The good ones don’t run away, Lia.”

— Mary E. Pearson

275. “The world would always know, even if men forgot.”

— Mary E. Pearson

276. “One day hope would have a name.”

— Mary E. Pearson

277. “This life was a dream of my own making, one where my imagination was my only boundary. It was a life that I alone commanded.”

— Mary E. Pearson

278. “I didn’t have the luxury of living only in a single moment. I had to live in a hundred fractured moments that held our futures in the balance.”

— Mary E. Pearson

279. “Maybe when you’re about to die, secrets don’t seem so important to keep.”

— Mary E. Pearson

280. “We stood and watched as the clan ran ahead of us into the valley that would become our home. Jafir pressed his hand to the small mound growing in my belly and smiled. Our hope. “We have been blessed by the gods,” he said. “The cruelties of the world are behind us now. Our child will never know them.” I.”

— Mary E. Pearson

281. “We wove our dreams together like armor.”

— Mary E. Pearson

282. “You are Rahtan, Kazi. You have a promise to keep, and you will betray him eventually.”

— Mary E. Pearson

283. “Betrayal tends to familiarize one with weapons.”

— Mary E. Pearson

284. “What’s wrong with getting married again? I would marry you a hundred times over. She kissed me, berry juice still on her lips. Only a hundred? she asked. A thousand times.”

— Mary E. Pearson

285. “Mason said, with admiration, that it made me a stone-cold bastard, but this girl had pushed me to a reckless burning edge I didn’t even recognize, and her calm reply only pushed me further.”

— Mary E. Pearson

286. “Gold pleases men, but blood serves the gods, because in the end, your life is all you have to give.”

— Mary E. Pearson

287. “Memories are short. It is the forgetting that I fear.”

— Mary E. Pearson

288. “What did they do to you, Kazi?” His voice was low, earnest. Even in the dim light, I was able to see the worry in his eyes. I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who did what?” “Who made you afraid of an open world? An open sky? Was it Venda? Your parents?” “No one did anything,” I answered quietly. “Then hold on to me,” he said. “Let me show you the stars.”

— Mary E. Pearson

289. “Sometimes you need to own one whole day. Maybe that’s what makes you brave enough to face another.”

— Mary E. Pearson

290. “It made me think how different everything might have been if we had both been born in Terravin.”

— Mary E. Pearson

291. “Maybe some lies, maybe most of them, were lies we only told ourselves.”

— Mary E. Pearson

292. “For everyone can hear spoken words, but only a few can hear the heart that beats behind them.”

— Mary E. Pearson

293. “My first encounter with Rafe had been a contentious one, and not by any stretch had I been smitten the way Walther was when he saw Greta. And Rafe certainly hadn’t wooed me with sweet words the way Mikael had Pauline. But maybe that didn’t make it any less true. Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.”

— Mary E. Pearson

294. “I hated that I found him – appealing. Not just his appearance, but the confidence of his strides, the calculations in his gaze, his cockiness, his damned voice. I hated the ridiculous flip-flop my stomach did just now when I caught him looking at me.”

— Mary E. Pearson

295. “I picked the Scholar’s or the Chancellor’s doors or – especially fun for me – the Timekeeper’s, resetting his clock and timepieces? That had especially angered my father, but I’d only done it hoping it would create an extra hour in his day for me.”

— Mary E. Pearson

296. “You two seemed inevitable.”

— Mary E. Pearson

297. “I am choosing my own destiny now – not a book, nor a man or a kingdom.”

— Mary E. Pearson

298. “There are many ways to feed people.”

— Mary E. Pearson

299. “Ragged clothes?” He grabbed my hand and examined it. “Chipped nails? Those aren’t enough to disguise what’s inside. You’ll always be you, Lia. You can’t run from that.”

— Mary E. Pearson

300. “All ways belong to the world. What is magic but what we don’t yet understand? Like the sign of the vine and lion you carry?”

— Mary E. Pearson