Quotes from Juliet Marillier

it matters not if you are here, or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light on the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are – you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.

if you give respect, yet get respect back. If you offend, you get...retribution.

Meanwhile, the great ash would rest where she lay, and mosses would creep over her trunk, and tiny creatures make their homes her dim hollows. Even in death she was a link in the great chain of the forest's being.

It was quiet; so quiet. Didn't these people know how to grieve for a good man? Didn't they know how to weep, and scream with rage, and curse the powers of darkness in their sorrow? Didn't they know how to hold one another, and dry one another's tears, and tell tales of the things he had done, and of what he had been, to see him safe on his way? Where were the great fires, and the toasts in strong ale, and the scent of burning juniper?

How could you live without human touch? Wasn't that the first thing you knew, when you came into the world and they laid you on your mother's belly? Her hand would come across and stroke your back, and cup your head, and she would smile through tears of exhaustion and wonderment. That touch of love would be the very first thing for you.

A tale can start in many ways. Thus, it is many tales, and at the same time each of these is but one way of telling the same story.

Even when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn't believe in miracles.

My response came without thinking. I made a gesture that said, I know. I believe you . And when he held out his hand to help me up the bank, I took it without flinching, as I had done once before in a torrential downpour, when that hand had been my only grip on reality in a flight from death. I trusted him. He was a Briton, and I trusted him.

Hope fought hard to stay alive. Even when you thought it was beaten to nothing, burned to ashes, drowned deep, still it flickered away, waiting to be found again.

Seven years of this and I'll have lost whatever edge I once had, I said. I'll have turned into one of those well-fed countrywomen who pride themselves on making better preserves then their neighbors, and give all their chickens names.

The threads of many beliefs can run side by side; from time to time they tangle, and mesh into a stronger rope.

The day before you died was the longest, slowest day ever. It gave you more time than you could possibly want to contemplate all the things you'd got wrong, the chances you'd missed, the errors you'd made. It was long enough to convince the most hopeful person that there was no point in anything.

But if you remove a tyrant in anything other than an open and visible way, another tyrant soon stands up to replace him.

My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest," said Conor, frowning with concentration. "My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth. This is the way of truth.

When the Fair Folk gave you an instruction, you followed it, whether it suited you or not. That was just the way it was.

I often tell myself, there is no point in wishing certain things had not happened. We can't change what has been, only do our best with what is to come.

The most reasonable of requests felt burdensome if a person had no choice in the matter.

But some things did not change... Courage, for instance. Dedication to a cause. Comradeship. When they were strong and pure, when they came from deep in the bone, those qualities could hold fast against all odds.

What I do . . . the path I tread . . . it brings some choices that test me hard.

This was a familiar feeling, for there were many places in the great forest where you could drink in its energy, become one with its ancient heart. When you were in trouble, you could find your way in these places.

The two of them are like open books, they speak the truth at the risk of their own lives, and when they keep silent their thoughts blaze like a beacon from their eyes.

His heart and mine added a rhythm all their own. We turned and turned, and with every turning we breathed a little more quickly and held on a little more tightly, and when we came back to the place we started, we stopped dancing and stood with our arms around each other, holding on as if we would never let go, not if the sky fell and the whole world came to an end.

cherish what you have, for in an instant it can be gone. And when it's gone, let the memory not be a weight that drags you down, but a bright light leading you forward.

The error was not yours, Somerled, Eyvind said quietly, moving to the doorway. It was mine. I failed to teach you the one lesson you could not do without: how to be a man.