Quotes from Terry Brooks

there is no greater misery than to remember, with bitter regret, a day when you were happy 

Do not be so quick to accept as truth what is only conjecture.

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

We should not be less than what we are.

They became sleepwalkers in a world of half-dreams and rambling thoughts with no break in the wearing march or the never-ending, silent black trunks that came and passed in countless thousands.

Sometimes change is necessary. Sometimes we recognize the need for it, but we don't know how to achieve it. We misread its nature. We think it is beyond us, failing to recognize that our inability to act is a problem of our own making. Change is the solution we require, but it is not a goal that is easily reached. Identifying and disposing of what is troubling to us requires caution and understanding.

Either you believed in something or you didn't—you couldn't have it both ways and be honest with yourself.

Well, he said softly, in this life you're often born one thing and die another. You don't have to accept that what you're given when you come in is all you'll have when you leave.

Events and circumstances sometimes conspire against us; if we insist on inflexibility for the purpose of maintaining our beliefs, we end up compromising ourselves nevertheless. We salvage one set of principles only to forsake another.

We build too many walls to be honest with ourselves. -Allanon

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

It's more habit than stupidity when I laugh at these things. I laugh at them to stay a sane man.

even a friendly smile shows the teeth behind!

Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost, High Lord. Believe it saved, and it may be. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing. Visions born of hope give birth to our success.

She had grown to accept unpleasantness as a part of life rather than to struggle futilely against truths that could not be changed.

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

It was the nature of things, of course. Life went on. The best you could do was to hold on to the memories that were important to you, so that even if everyone else forgot, you would remember.

that the wars of the past were slowly being forgotten. Shea believed that one could turn his back on the past and build a new world with the future, never understanding that the future was inextricably tied to the past, an interwoven tapestry of events and ideas that would never be entirely severed.

There was that sense of abandoning the familiar for the unknown that characterizes all journeys made for the first time.