Top 200 Tamora Pierce Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “This may be my only chance to see humans before these two are made into fertilizer for Moonwind’s rosebushes.”

— Tamora Pierce

152. “Knowing to whom she owed the new warmth, Alanna tried to thank Mari Fahrar. The old woman brushed her words aside. “All things change,” she told Alanna frankly. “It does not hurt men to know women have power, too.” Alanna had to laugh. Until Mari and Farda entered her life, she never realized that the tribeswomen viewed their men not with fear but with loving disrespect. Sometimes she felt that she was the one getting the education, not her pupils.”

— Tamora Pierce

153. “I love you,” he whispered. “If you get yourself killed, I will never forgive you.”

— Tamora Pierce

154. “If we just allowed women and men more leeway in our culture and more acceptance, I think they would be able to make better compromises.”

— Tamora Pierce

155. “And she told you something about yourself you really ought to know: that you’re beautiful, and worth loving.”

— Tamora Pierce

156. “No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?”

— Tamora Pierce

157. “Daja doesn’t exactly need to be tested on whether she’s honorable or not.”

— Tamora Pierce

158. “Folk who tell the truth don’t think they must keep repeating it. It’s the truth – it’s obvious. Only liars tell it over and over, trying to hammer their like into others’ minds.”

— Tamora Pierce

159. “Does anyone in this land act like they’re supposed to?”

— Tamora Pierce

160. “But, Sergeant Osbern, Sir, I like my head.”

— Tamora Pierce

161. “It’s always better to attack than to defend,” Coram had told her when they talked about fencing late at night. “Always. Ye don’t win with defense – ye only hold the other feller off, or wear him down. Attack and have done with it!”

— Tamora Pierce

162. “If thanks was what I wanted,” Sandry replied in the same language, “I would be sad indeed. Since I don’t want it, I won’t miss it.”

— Tamora Pierce

163. “A knight must develop all his abilities, to the fullest.”

— Tamora Pierce

164. “He has never been stripped of his voice, so he does not know how it feels to be stripped of it, even a little.”

— Tamora Pierce

165. “But I’ve only been at this mage business four years. I have some catching up to do –.”

— Tamora Pierce

166. “You’ll see. I’m as good as any boy. I’m better. – Kel.”

— Tamora Pierce

167. “Ozorne, please don’t let him try to make me into a battle mage. I wish you’d told me that’s what you wanted.” Arram stopped and grabbed his friend by the arms. “I won’t do it. I’m not a killer. I’ll never be a killer.”

— Tamora Pierce

168. “Feelings, she learned, were hard to fight. She treasured his smiles and compliments and tried not to dwell on the fact that he gave this things to his friend Kel. His dreamy-eyed gazes, poems, and fits of passionate melancholy were for Uline. It was hard not to resent the older girl.”

— Tamora Pierce

169. “She would have kissed him, if she kissed stupid men.”

— Tamora Pierce

170. “It was like trying to balance on a pair of knife blades. Who had thought of this mad form of travel in the first place? And why had no one locked them up before they passed their dangerous ideas on to others?”

— Tamora Pierce

171. “You come from a race that spends more time murdering your own kind than do all the immortals put together, yet you insist you are better than us.”

— Tamora Pierce

172. “Only the man who wishes to be corrupted will fall into evil ways.”

— Tamora Pierce

173. “When I told you don’t touch me to wake me, ever, because I’ve been in a war and I react violently, you respected me.” For a plant person, Rosethorn could sound like iron when she made a point with someone stupid. “Evvy was in that same war. She fought as hard as any adult – harder, sometimes. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that she may suffer the same effects.”

— Tamora Pierce

174. “We’re men, and men aren’t born to stand alone.”

— Tamora Pierce

175. “Come on, Stork Boy, aren’t you excited?”

— Tamora Pierce

176. “You get too excited over big flashes, Tunstall. Mages rely on that to make you think they have more power than you.”

— Tamora Pierce

177. “A bully fights people littler and weaker than he is because he thinks it’s fun.”

— Tamora Pierce

178. “I well knew the rules to follow with our training Dogs: Speak when you’re spoken to. Keep out of the way. Obey all orders. Get killed on your own time.”

— Tamora Pierce

179. “Do we say, Oh now I’m going to be nice to the weak and the small? Or do we do as we learned when we were pages?”

— Tamora Pierce

180. “Mistresses, have you ever noticed that when we disagree with a male- I hesitate to say ‘man’- or find ourselves in a position over males, the first comment they make is always about our reputations or our monthlies?”

— Tamora Pierce

181. “I bet his mother was a wyvern. -Scamp.”

— Tamora Pierce

182. “Folk caught up in a riot aren’t our cousins and sisters, our brothers and uncles. They are part of a big animal with many arms and claws, armed with stones and sticks.”

— Tamora Pierce

183. “He doesn’t need my help coming up with pranks. He’s got too many ideas of his own. – Daja referring to Briar in their first year at Discipline cottage.”

— Tamora Pierce

184. “The wolf who sings alone is not happy.”

— Tamora Pierce

185. “You turned into a hero when I wasn’t watching.”

— Tamora Pierce

186. “Locks are for the unimaginative.”

— Tamora Pierce

187. “She rides as a man, goes unveiled as a man, fights as a man. Let her prove herself worthy as a man, worthy of her weapons and of our friendship.”

— Tamora Pierce

188. “Men died as she watched, and they didn’t care about what they had fought for.”

— Tamora Pierce

189. “I hate those things,” grumbled Kel as she removed the bowstring.”

— Tamora Pierce

190. “You choose tools for a task by their crafting, not their look,” a crow said crisply from a nearby tree. He flapped over to land on a barrel in front of the cottage. “A smith’s finest hammer will be streaked with soot.”

— Tamora Pierce

191. “Tortall and the Queens Riders!”

— Tamora Pierce

192. “The hardest lesson any of us must learn is there’s only so much we can do,” she informed him, her voice lemon-tart. “We run into it headfirst all the time, knowing what we can do, what we can’t, how much we can do. We think of magic as this promise that we will fix anything that comes our way, Keth. We can’t.”

— Tamora Pierce

193. “If I were useful, you wouldn’t know it was me.”

— Tamora Pierce

194. “The Gentle Mother.” In Ramasu’s soft voice it sounded like a curse. “They took a goddess with a scythe in her hand, striding the rows of grain, and turned her to present the self of a housebound creature.”

— Tamora Pierce

195. “That’s all this job is, Daine,” she explained. “Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. And it will only get worse, not better.”

— Tamora Pierce

196. “One of the things I strive for is realism. I need to be as real as possible in the dilemmas my characters face.”

— Tamora Pierce

197. “Never before had she seen such creatures, though they looked much live very large, very shaggy white goats. Thin black horns punctuated the top of their long faces. You look like a collection of grandfathers, she thought, amused.”

— Tamora Pierce

198. “We’ve got to protect Jonathan and Darkness, don’t we?” She swung herself onto Moonlight’s back. “Let’s go, girl.” As one of the last fighters to the point, Alanna could clearly see that the enemy had advanced past the trees, engaging Jon’s men in the clearing around the main path. She glimpsed Jonathan’s silver and sapphire gleaming in the thick of the battle as Darkness reared to fight as well. Myles was beside the prince, with Gary and Raoul flanking them both. The enemy would have trouble.”

— Tamora Pierce

199. “You don’t think history gets rewritten, sometimes?”

— Tamora Pierce

200. “Things change,” Daja said softly. “We change with them. We sail before the wind. We become adults. As adults, we keep our minds and our secrets hidden, and our wounds. It’s safer.”

— Tamora Pierce