Tamora Pierce Quotes
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151. “The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

153. “When we return – when I have delivered our discovery – I will give you a book to read about a thing called wild magic,” she said drily. “I wouldn’t talk about it in the university. It’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale. Well, I am an old wife. You might be interested, that’s all.”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

158. “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

159. “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

160. “Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I’m done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense – Reply by Dove to Aly’s silent inquiry.”

— Tamora Pierce

161. “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

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

164. “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

165. “Don’t make me regret taking you on. If I get irritated, I might drown you a little bit.”

— 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. “And I think Alanna would quote Sean Connery from “The Untouchables” to you: “At the end of your shift, go home alive.” She would say, Don’t think about being brave or working hard – just do what you need to do. When you look back, you’ll be surprised to see that this was exactly enough.”

— Tamora Pierce

169. “People are jackals, always willing to feed off someone else’s kill.”

— Tamora Pierce

170. “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

171. “He knows about things like betrayal, and being afraid, and the looks on people’s faces when they know you did something they thought impossible.”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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

177. “Sweetheart, never listen to what my enemies say. They’re very confused people. I know they are because I’ve spent years making them that way.”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

179. “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

180. “Tortall and the Queens Riders!”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

185. “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

186. “Most humans think the appearance of quiet is quiet. They do not see that sometimes the enemy is as quiet as the serpent. Only when it has stolen all of their eggs will they know bad walks in the quiet as well as the noisy.”

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

188. “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

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

191. “Locks are for the unimaginative.”

— Tamora Pierce

192. “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

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

— Tamora Pierce

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

— Tamora Pierce

195. “If Cape wasn’t your last name, what was your real one?” I asked, deathly curious now. “Ahhhh,” he complained. “Pincas Huckleburr.”

— Tamora Pierce

196. “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

197. “Don’t we teach our women to view all men according to the actions of a few?”

— Tamora Pierce

198. “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

199. “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

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

— Tamora Pierce