Top 40 Nancy Farmer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It’s how rats are. It’s what makes them rats. But a human doesn’t run and hide in dark places, because he’s something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.”

— Nancy Farmer

2. “Patience and love can do anything.”

— Nancy Farmer

3. “After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering?”

— Nancy Farmer

4. “Slow people are just paying close attention.”

— Nancy Farmer

5. “No kindness is ever wasted, nor can we ever tell how much good may come of it.”

— Nancy Farmer

6. “Power’s a strange thing, lad. It’s a drug people like me crave it.”

— Nancy Farmer

7. “People’s souls are like gardens. You can’t turn your back on someone because his garden’s full of weeds. You have to give him water and lots of sunshine.”

— Nancy Farmer

8. “He has his good side and his bad side. Very dark indeed is his majesty when he wants to be. When he was young, he made a choice, like a tree does when it decides to grow one way or the other. He grew large and green until he shadowed over the whole forest, but most of his branches are twisted.”

— Nancy Farmer

9. “But I also know that to ignore joy while it lasts, in favor of lamenting one’s fate, is a great crime.”

— Nancy Farmer

10. “No one can tell the difference between a clone and a human. That’s because there isn’t any difference. The idea of clones being inferior is a filthy lie.”

— Nancy Farmer

11. “Guardian angels guide the steps of idiots.”

— Nancy Farmer

12. “The mouse is safest when she doesn’t leave footprints in the butter.”

— Nancy Farmer

13. “Heroes, well, they don’t live so long. But they’re muy suave, and we all admire them.”

— Nancy Farmer

14. “Matt discovered that no matter how terrified he’d been at first, it wasn’t possible to stay terrified. It was as though his brain said, Okay. That’s enough. Let’s find something else to do.”

— Nancy Farmer

15. “I remembered what Olaf always said: You must never give up, even if you’re falling off a cliff. You never know what might happen on the way down.”

— Nancy Farmer

16. “Always choose your bodyguard from another country, they find it harder to make alliance and betray you.”

— Nancy Farmer

17. “Life and death are in constant battle. There is no way in this world for happiness to exist alone...”

— Nancy Farmer

18. “I think people have an instinct for a family. You look until you find a mother, a father, a sister, a brother. They don’t have to be blood relatives. They just have to love you. And when you find them, you don’t have to look anymore.”

— Nancy Farmer

19. “When you’re small, you can choose which way to grow. If you’re kind and decent, you grow into a kind and decent man. The idea that if you were mean, you might stay mean forever had never occurred to him.”

— Nancy Farmer

20. “If I had a soul, I’d probably wind up in hell anyway.”

— Nancy Farmer

21. “Tendai remembered his last birthday. It seemed one shouldn’t make wishes idly. Who knew which spirits were listening. He considered a moment and then thought, I wish for courage. Because with courage, you weren’t afraid to look at the truth. You weren’t afraid to ask questions or do the right thing.”

— Nancy Farmer

22. “The high point of your life was when you knocked me down.”

— Nancy Farmer

23. “It isn’t healthy to care for someone who can never love you back.”

— Nancy Farmer

24. “He didn’t want anything new in his life, no matter how beautiful.”

— Nancy Farmer

25. “Bubonic plague killed a third of the people in Europe, but it destroyed the old governments and allowed their citizens to gain freedom. The result was a burst of creativity and prosperity never seen before.”

— Nancy Farmer

26. “For purely selfish reasons, the old man had preserved what the rest of the world had destroyed.”

— Nancy Farmer

27. “She took to reading with a fervor so extreme, Baba Joseph had to take the books from her hands by force. ‘Your eyes are not tractors. They are not meant to pull heavy loads,’ he said sternly.”

— Nancy Farmer

28. “You must not be hurt by other people’s ignorance.”

— Nancy Farmer

29. “I keep a small amount of laudanum for my nerves.” She keeps about enough to wipe out a city, Matt thought.”

— Nancy Farmer

30. “If you squat on a path, you’ll get boils on your backside.”

— Nancy Farmer

31. “Eejits can feel pain, mi patron, otherwise I couldn’t train them. I don’t think they suffer in the same way we do. To suffer implies emotion, and eejits don’t have that.”

— Nancy Farmer

32. “You get used to being evil.”

— Nancy Farmer

33. “That was the best kind of story: when the teller was as much under its spell as the listener.”

— Nancy Farmer

34. “As for asking Tam Lin, Matt didn’t know how to bring up the subject. By the way, is anyone planning to cut me up into T-bone steaks? Even more terrifying was the bodyguard’s possible answer: You hit the nail on the head there, laddie. I always said you were bright as a button.”

— Nancy Farmer

35. “Quests always have their ups and downs,′ rumbled the giant. ‘The point is never to give up, even if you’re falling off a cliff. You never know what might happen on the way to the bottom.”

— Nancy Farmer

36. “Once, he’d been satisfied by the music alone. Now he had learned about friendship...”

— Nancy Farmer

37. “Gods, if they’re neglected, tend to fall asleep, but they never really go away.”

— Nancy Farmer

38. “He’s a scientist, and they know everything. Religion is crap.”

— Nancy Farmer

39. “I’d guess that you have some purpose to fulfill and that is why you were saved. But don’t get a swelled head over it. A cabbage has a purpose when someone needs to make soup.”

— Nancy Farmer

40. “Celia said nothing. She might have been carved out of stone.”

— Nancy Farmer

41. “Matt had no trouble believing her.”

— Nancy Farmer

42. “They ruined their environment, and their civilization collapsed. You’d think their descendants would have learned not to kill the earth that feeds them, but humans are endlessly stupid and greedy.”

— Nancy Farmer

43. “Through her eyes, Matt saw the world as an infinitely hopeful place.”

— Nancy Farmer

44. “Don’t you think I’m owed those lives?”

— Nancy Farmer

45. “He refused to think about her, or when he did, he quickly thought of something else to drive her image from his mind. After a while he forgot what she looked like, except in dreams.”

— Nancy Farmer

46. “Sorrow fought with joy in his mind. He was going home, but he had lost Thorgil and Rune forever.”

— Nancy Farmer

47. “To speak was to open a door into his carefully built fortress, and anything might rush inside.”

— Nancy Farmer