Top 160 Megan Whalen Turner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Sometimes, if you want to change a man’s mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

2. “But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

3. “I’m dying of boredom. Or maybe just dying.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

4. “It was a race between the tortoise and the hare, but the tortoise had just enough head start, and he had the magus to drag him along.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

5. “All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

6. “A thief never makes a noise by accident.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

7. “Dying would have been so much easier.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

8. “I thought that being king meant I didn’t have to kill people myself. I see know that was another misconception.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

9. “We do better when we are praised and worse when we feel unappreciated for our work.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

10. “I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

11. “The younger one looked to be completely useless.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

12. “Don’t match your weakness against your opponent’s strength.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

13. “Safety is an illusion, Costis. A Thief might fall at any time, and eventually the day must come when the god will let him. Whether I am on a rafter three stories up or on a staircase three steps up, I am in my god’s hands. He will keep me safe, or he will not, here or on the stairs.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

14. “He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon’s promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

15. “If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

16. “It isn’t an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don’t know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

17. “If we truly trust no one, we cannot survive.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

18. “The Lord of Rags and Tatters.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

19. “I hate horses. I know people who think that they are noble, graceful animals, but regardless of what a horse looks like from a distance, never forget that it’s as likely to step on your foot as look at you.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

20. “The Magus must had eyes like a thief because he told Pol to stop and dismount to walk alongside me, one hand resting just above my knee ready to shake me if I fell asleep. He shook hard and resorted to pinching periodically.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

21. “To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

22. “A little danger adds spice to life.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

23. “All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you’re halfway to Methana.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

24. “And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

25. “I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had failed them. At least I could not do so again.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

26. “Welcome,” said the magus. “Would you like some dried beef, some dried beef, or some dried beef for lunch?” “Oh, I’ll take stuffed pigeons in sauce, thank you, and some decent wine to drink. None of that cheap stuff, please.” The magus handed me an almost empty paper package of dried beef and half of a loaf of bread. “Enjoy your meal,” he said.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

27. “I love stupid plans.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

28. “If I couldn’t be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me, then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia’s advice because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, Sounis would be safe.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

29. “He said the only thin worse than being wrong in a family argument was being right.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

30. “You are treasure beyond any price.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

31. “That one,“-he nodded toward the closed door-” will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

32. “I’ll stop shouting. I won’t sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

33. “Will you sit down and stop shouting?” she asked. “I’ll stop shouting. I won’t sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

34. “One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish,” said Eugenides. “You treat them with care, or you’ll find you’ve committed an act of war.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

35. “The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis’s palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people’s glances.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

36. “Ask yourself, Eugenides: why that orange tree? Why that tamarisk bush? She had promised you your heart’s desire while a child of hers was alone in the world and unhappy. See, Eugenides,” Moira said, holding out a finger from each of her hands and interlinking them. “Only two threads brought together, two threads that touched,” she reassured him. “Nothing more than that. And everything else left up to you.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

37. “The Attolian king obviously had a deep well of spite and I would’ve appreciated his low cunning more if I hadn’t thought the Attolian was about to wring my neck.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

38. “These people make my family look easy to get along with.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

39. “I know that if you don’t look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won’t find one.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

40. “If only wars could be won on the strength of the cheering when they begin, instead of the blood and the pain and the horror that feed the gods of discord.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

41. “As a ten-year-old boy, the Thief of Eddis could stop a grown man in his tracks with a single look. Where had that look gone?”

— Megan Whalen Turner

42. “The Thieves of Eddis don’t have breaking points. We have flash points instead, like gunpowder.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

43. “Speaking of the king to the queen – He didn’t marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

44. “I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

45. “Sophos turned red, and I wondered about the circulation of his blood; maybe his body kept an extra supply of it in his head, ready for blushing.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

46. “Anyone who can steal the king’s seal ring can manage the locks on his record room.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

47. “A successful thief doesn’t depend on things being unlikely to happen,” I said.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

48. “He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn’t ever quit.”

— Megan Whalen Turner

49. “What kind of man refers to himself as safely dead?”

— Megan Whalen Turner

50. “Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn’t force me to enter her service.”

— Megan Whalen Turner