Top 180 Terry Brooks Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “What they didn’t want to believe, what they tried repeatedly to dismiss, was that whatever good and evil existed in the world came from within themselves and not from some abstract source.”

— Terry Brooks

102. “All those men had died for some senseless reason, died perhaps without ever knowing exactly what they had fought to accomplish.”

— Terry Brooks

103. “This search is all about faith. Faith that what’s clearly impossible might somehow turn out not to be. Faith that we can do what we never would have thought we could. Faith to keep going when everything tells us we should turn back.”

— Terry Brooks

104. “But fear was something to be overcome, an enemy of a different sort, not something from which to run away but something to confront. He had done so many times in his life, and each time it made him a little stronger, a little more self-assured. The.”

— Terry Brooks

105. “Centuries of enlightenment and progress vanished virtually overnight because Men couldn’t find a way to use it wisely and purposefully.”

— Terry Brooks

106. “He laughed in maddened frenzy, knowing somehow that he was no longer in a world of living creatures, but a world of death where soulless beings wandered in hopeless search of escape from their eternal prison. He stumbled on amidst them, laughing, talking, even singing gaily, his mind no longer a part of his mortal being. All about him, the creatures of the dark world followed in cringing companionship, knowing that the maddened mortal was almost one of them.”

— Terry Brooks

107. “You spend so much time wondering who you are, don’t you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is as plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forger that the answers are mostly inside yourselves.” He paused anew. “Cats are not included in that analysis. Cats don’t waste time wondering about such things. Cats just get on with the business of living.”

— Terry Brooks

108. “What mattered was removing himself from his present existence in an effort to find his future.”

— Terry Brooks

109. “We never know what we can be or do until the need is there and we are tested by it.”

— Terry Brooks

110. “Even in lies there are sometimes truths revealed.”

— Terry Brooks

111. “Love supplies a kind of strength that can withstand even death.”

— Terry Brooks

112. “We do not always recognize the thing that comes to destroy us.”

— Terry Brooks

113. “We are the sum of our lives and not simply pieces of them. We are the whole of our time in this world.”

— Terry Brooks

114. “Shea, particularly, had passed the point where his chief emotion was fear; now he felt only a sense of numbness that dulled his mind into self-imposed surrender, a robot-like acceptance of the fact that he was being led to the proverbial slaughter.”

— Terry Brooks

115. “Sometimes it is better not to speak of what we see in our dreams. Sometimes our dreams belong only to us.”

— Terry Brooks

116. “We grow as best we can under the circumstances given us. What good does it do to second-guess ourselves years after the fact? Better that we simply try to understand why we are as we are and then better ourselves by learning from that.”

— Terry Brooks

117. “There’s an old saying. If someone doesn’t want to be with you, then you probably don’t belong with them.”

— Terry Brooks

118. “We all struggle with what’s right and wrong, Paxon. That’s the nature of our lives. We have to figure out what we can live with, and hope that what we do to bring it about doesn’t exact a cost that’s too high. We have to decide where to draw the line.”

— Terry Brooks

119. “He had no illusions about what that meant; he understood the nature of who he was. He was trained to fight, and he looked forward to testing himself in combat. When he was going into battle, he was alive in a way that was both exciting and satisfying. He was complete.”

— Terry Brooks

120. “I was thinking about choices and how we make them. About how some are so easy and some so hard. I was thinking how we make some because we want to and some because we have to.”

— Terry Brooks

121. “But much of life didn’t allow for knowing things in advance, and you had to trust to your instincts and common sense.”

— Terry Brooks

122. “He was waiting, and the waiting was painful. Not because he didn’t know how to wait, but because he didn’t know what he was waiting for.”

— Terry Brooks

123. “The unicorns were the most recognizable magic the fairies possessed, and they sent them to those worlds where belief in the magic was in danger of falling altogether. After all there has to be some belief in magic- however small- for any world to survive.”

— Terry Brooks

124. “If you are ever completely satisfied with something you have written, you are setting your sights too low. But if you can’t let go of your material even after you have done the best that you can with it, you are setting your sights too high.”

— Terry Brooks

125. “I ricordi non sono tesori di vetro da tenere conservati dentro una cassa. Sono nastri colorati da appendere al vento.”

— Terry Brooks

126. “If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.”

— Terry Brooks

127. “I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.”

— Terry Brooks

128. “You spend so much time wondering who you are, don’t you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.”

— Terry Brooks

129. “A cat never discusses his business with humans, not even Princesses. A cat never explains and never apologizes. A cat never alibis. You must accept a cat as it is and for what it is and not expect more than the pleasure of its company.”

— Terry Brooks

130. “I want to kick-start your imagination and let you discover the places it can take you.”

— Terry Brooks

131. “This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.”

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

133. “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

134. “He woke to find Larkin Quill standing over him. Even from the back – for he was turned away – the cloaked form of the ex-Tracker was instantly recognizable.”

— Terry Brooks

135. “Druid fortress.”

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

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

— Terry Brooks

141. “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

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

— Terry Brooks

143. “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

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

— Terry Brooks

145. “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

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

— Terry Brooks

147. “She has her gown nicely in place tonight, doesn’t she? Black velvet and sparkles, not a thread left hanging. Clever girl, this city. Even the sky is her friend.”

— Terry Brooks

148. “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

149. “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

150. “For a moment the highlander lay quietly and studied the room in silent leisure, allowing the sleep to disperse and his rested mind to awaken fully.”

— Terry Brooks