Shawn Bruce > Shawn's Quotes

“All peoples think they are forever," he growled softly. "They do not believe they will ever not be. The Sinnissippi were that way. They did not think they would be eradicated. But that is what happened. Your people, Nest, believe this of themselves. They will survive forever, they think. Nothing can destroy them, can wipe them so completely from the earth and from history that all that will remain is their name and not even that will be known with certainty. They have such faith in their invulnerability.
Yet already their destruction begins. It comes upon them gradually, in little ways. Bit by bit their belief in themselves erodes. A growing cynicism pervades their lives. Small acts of kindness and charity are abandoned as pointless and somehow indicative of weakness. Little failures of behavior lead to bigger ones. It is not enough to ignore the discourtesies of others; discourtesies must be repaid in kind. Men are intolerant and judgmental . They are without grace. If one man proclaims that God has spoken to him, another quickly proclaims that his God is false. If the homeless cannot find shelter, then surely they are to blame for their condition. If the poor do not have jobs, then surely it is because they will not work. If sickness strikes down those whose lifestyle differs from our own, then surely they have brought it on themselves.
Look at your people, Nest Freemark. They abandon their old. They shun their sick. They cast off their children. They decry any who are different. They commit acts of unfaithfulness, betrayal, and depravity every day. They foster lies that undermine beliefs. Each small darkness breeds another. Each small incident of anger, bitterness, pettiness, and greed breeds others. A sense of futility consumes them. They feel helpless to effect even the smallest change. Their madness is of their own making, and yet they are powerless against it because they refuse to acknowledge its source. They are at war with themselves, but they do not begin to understand the nature of the battle being fought."

-pages 96-97”
― Terry Brooks, Running with the Demon

“Who would you be but who you are?”
― Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn

“Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger. Travel too far that road and the way is lost.”
― Terry Brooks, The Elfstones of Shannara

“We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.”
― Terry Brooks, The Druid of Shannara

“Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.”
― Terry Brooks

“Let me tell you something you haven't learnt yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events - they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn't have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don't even notice at first, and then one day it's there. You wake up and you just don't have the fire anymore...Then you have a choice. You can either give in to what you're feeling, just say "okay, enough is enough" and be done with it, or you can fight it. You can accept that every day you're alive you're going to have to face it down, that you're going to have to say to yourself that you don't care what you feel, that it doesn't matter what happens anyway, that you're going to do what you have to because otherwise you're defeated and life doesn't have any real pupose left. When you can do that, little Wren, when you can accept the wearing down and the eroding, then you can do anything. How did I manage to keep going out nights? I just told myself I didn't matter all that much - that those in here mattered more. You know something? It's not so hard really. You just have to get past the fear.”
― Terry Brooks (The Elf Queen of Shannara)

“When she cried, he would say, "there is nothing wrong with crying. Your feelings tell you who are. They tell what is important. Don't ever be ashamed of them.”
― Terry Brooks, Armageddon's Children

“It's better to die in pursuit of your dreams than to live a life without hope.”
― Terry Brooks, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

“Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing.
Visions born of hope give birth to our success.
What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.”
― Terry Brooks

“Evil contained is not evil destroyed.”
― Terry Brooks, The Elfstones of Shannara

“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, The Elf Queen of Shannara

“You shouldn't believe everything you hear you're young, not stupid.”
― Terry Brooks, The Wishsong of Shannara

“If I have the means, I have the responsibility to employ them.”
― Terry Brooks, The Scions of Shannara

“Faith, Princess," the Prism Cat repeated. "It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.”
― Terry Brooks, A Princess of Landover

“Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.”
― Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn

“I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.”
― Terry Brooks

“Herein lies the heart and soul of the nations.
Their right to be free men,
Their desire to live in peace,
Their courage to seek out truth,
Herein lies the Sword of Shannara.”
― Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara

“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, The Tangle Box

“Might have, could have, may have, should have—the haves and have nots reduced to pointless possibilities.”
― Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn

“What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that is what we have to sustain us in our endevors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.”
― Terry Brooks, A Knight of the Word

“The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you.”
― Terry Brooks, The Scions of Shannara

“We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.

I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89”
― Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff

“If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.”
― Terry Brooks, Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

“We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.”
― Terry Brooks

“What you write chooses you.”
― Terry Brooks

“Cats can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to what anyone says or does. Rather like Princesses.”
― Terry Brooks, A Princess of Landover

“Fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.”
― Terry Brooks, Running with the Demon

“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, Armageddon's Children

“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

“...[Y]ou have an inner strength that makes it possible for you to do things other people couldn't even begin to think of doing.”
― Terry Brooks