Top 180 Terry Brooks Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If anything in your life is more important than writing – anything at all – you should walk away now while you still can. Forewarned is forearmed. For those who cannot or will not walk away, you need only to remember this. Writing is life. Breathe deeply of it.”

— Terry Brooks

52. “Life went on, no matter the magnitude of the events that influenced it.”

— Terry Brooks

53. “Commitment is a journey that works best when each step taken is carefully measured.”

— Terry Brooks

54. “Cats can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to what anyone says or does. Rather like Princesses.”

— Terry Brooks

55. “We never know what we can be or do until the need is there and we are tested by it. I thought as you did. I was afraid, and I fled with my fear to where I thought I would be safe. But necessity will always find us, and our sense of right and wrong will always find a way to make what is seemingly impossible the reality of our lives.”

— Terry Brooks

56. “A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore.”

— Terry Brooks

57. “It wasn’t simply his choosing to be alone that kept him that way; it was almost a condition of his existence. The feeling that he was an outsider had always been there.”

— Terry Brooks

58. “Fantasy is the only canvas large enough for me to paint on.”

— Terry Brooks

59. “If you are always frightened for yourself you can’t act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don’t matter all that much.”

— Terry Brooks

60. “The future is a map drawn in the sand, and the tide can wash it away in a moment.”

— Terry Brooks

61. “Eppure, si nascondeva nella sua mente confusa la convinzione di poter superare tutti quegli ostacoli apparentemente insormontabili.”

— Terry Brooks

62. “There was a madness in the scheme of life that men were forced to accept either with resigned fury or blunt indifference.”

— Terry Brooks

63. “Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.”

— Terry Brooks

64. “Put the past behind you and the future ahead where they belong and spend your time in the present with the rest of us.”

— Terry Brooks

65. “Anyway, that’s the past, and what matters is the future. That’s how life works, because it’s short and precious and kind of doubtful.”

— Terry Brooks

66. “Believe for long enough and it will come to pass. Believe it might be so, and it will be so.”

— Terry Brooks

67. “Faith, Princess,” the Prism Cat repeated. “It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.”

— Terry Brooks

68. “Often, it is the least likely among us who is in a position to accomplish the most.”

— Terry Brooks

69. “The destruction of the world depends on the willingness of the people in it to harm each other in any way necessary to achieve their own ends and to further their own causes. And we got that part down pat, don’t we? We know how to hurt each other and how to think up whatever excuses we need to justify it. We’re victims and executioners both.”

— Terry Brooks

70. “I haven’t made up my mind about doing anymore Landover books.”

— Terry Brooks

71. “You know, Annie,” he said then, his deep voice thoughtful, “fighting didn’t change his opinion. The opinions of others, whether you agree with them or not, are something you have to learn to tolerate.”

— Terry Brooks

72. “One’s word was a matter of honor. It was not a thing that could be bandied about when convenient or slipped on and off like clothing to match changes in the weather. If he went back on it even once, that opened the door to a flood of excuses for going back on it every time thereafter.”

— Terry Brooks

73. “But Miles had always approached life differently than he, always preferring to blend in with his surroundings rather than to shape them, always preferring to make do. He just didn’t understand that there were some things in life a man simply should not accept.”

— Terry Brooks

74. “I would never leave your side for a moment if it were possible. But it is not. It is not in the nature of life that we can be together in all things.”

— Terry Brooks

75. “We think we know them, but we really don’t. We let ourselves be deceived because we are always expecting the best out of those who seem willing to provide it.”

— Terry Brooks

76. “Hindsight should have lent clarity to his actions; it did not. Rather, he felt a lingering sense of confusion. Everything seemed to jumble together in his mind – all the disparate incomplete reasoning, all the emotions that intertwined and colored. They would not sort themselves out for him; they would not arrange themselves in a neat orderly fashion. They merely shuffled about like stray sheep and he chased after them hopelessly.”

— Terry Brooks

77. “I think it is something else. I think we were given a starting point, but nothing more. The future remains undecided. Things may change as events unfold, and we must be ready to change with them.”

— Terry Brooks

78. “Our problem is not one of ignorance; it is one of complacency. We are too quick to accept the life we know and not quick enough to embrace the life we only imagine. We think that events must proceed as we dictate, and that no other voice will ever have meaning but ours.”

— Terry Brooks

79. “We forget that what matters begins with the imagination.”

— Terry Brooks

80. “Evil contained is not evil destroyed.”

— Terry Brooks

81. “Here’s to the end of days gone past – some good, some not so good. And here’s to the beginning of new days.”

— Terry Brooks

82. “But your responsibilities are sometimes given you without choice, without consent.”

— Terry Brooks

83. “We are keepers of the peace, not soldiers.”

— Terry Brooks

84. “Mostly, kids were expected to entertain themselves and stay out of their parents’ hair. To that end, you were sent outside to play at the drop of a hat. It wasn’t an option; it was a standing mandate. If there wasn’t a winter blizzard or a spring rainstorm or a summer heat wave, you went outside and stayed outside until the next mealtime came around.”

— Terry Brooks

85. “Fiction writing is a twenty-four-hou r-a-day occupation. You never leave your work behind. It is always with you, and to some extent, you are always thinking about it. You don’t take your work home; your work never leaves home. It lives inside you. It resides and grows and comes alive in your mind.”

— Terry Brooks

86. “Your past was your heritage and the foundation on which you were built. You couldn’t start over. You could only repair and move on.”

— Terry Brooks

87. “Blind acceptance of what you believe to be the dictates of fate and circumstance is dangerous.”

— Terry Brooks

88. “Courtesy has nothing to do with the matter, High Lord Ben Holiday. Playing games is a way of life with cats. We tease, we taunt, and we do exactly as we please, not as others would have us do. Playing games is an integral part of our personae. Those who wish to have any sort of relationship with us must expect as much. They must understand that participation in our games is necessary if they wish communication on any level.”

— Terry Brooks

89. “Well, I think that as a country, we’ve drifted away from appreciating the importance of imagination.”

— Terry Brooks

90. “We should not be less than what we are.”

— Terry Brooks

91. “Overhead, the tanequil’s branches formed a silvery green canopy in the moonlight, its strange webbing of orange lines shimmering softly.”

— Terry Brooks

92. “When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.”

— Terry Brooks

93. “It is in the nature of things to want to believe that what’s familiar and comfortable will last forever.”

— Terry Brooks

94. “On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind – to put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up.”

— Terry Brooks

95. “What you write chooses you.”

— Terry Brooks

96. “We have thousands and thousands of people living homeless on the streets of our cities at the same time that we have men and women earning millions of dollars a year running companies that make products whose continued usage will ruin our health, our environment, and our values. The irony is incredible. It’s obscene.”

— Terry Brooks

97. “There were times, she knew from experience, when it was best just to continue on rather than to shift directions, even when it didn’t seem as if you were getting anywhere. Your chances of success weren’t always something you could measure accurately. Perseverance in the face of failure counted for something.”

— Terry Brooks

98. “You have to trust in who and what you are. You have to trust in the dream you have been given. You have believed in it until now, haven’t you?”

— Terry Brooks

99. “It was not so much a sense of failure that he had experienced as a sense of his own limitations. You cannot do everything you might wish that you could do.”

— Terry Brooks

100. “Either you believed in something or you didn’t – you couldn’t have it both ways and be honest with yourself.”

— Terry Brooks