Top 239 Quotes & Sayings by Tamora Pierce

I love meeting fans. They're always fun, they always have good things to say, smart questions to ask, and plenty of ideas for me to explore in the future.

Teen problem novels? I can go through them like a box of chocolates. And there are fantasy books out now that need a lot more editing. Fantasy got to be so popular that people began to think 'We don't need to be as diligent with the razor blade,' but they do.

I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before.

We live in a dark time. Books are as dark as what is available to teenagers through the media every day.

After I recovered from 'Lioness', I wanted to write something about animals because I really like mythical creatures, especially dragons. At 12, I was one of those semi-recluses who did better with animals than people. Out of that, came the character, Daine, who could communicate with animals.

Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' just rocked my world in the late '80s and early '90s. I couldn't read them fast enough.

What people tell me they take away from my books is that they can shape their lives, they can achieve their own dreams. And certainly that's what I want them to take away.

I'm of the Samuel Goldwyn school of writing: If you need to send a message, call Western Union. Any messages people take away from my books are the ones they see in them.

Books are as dark as what is available to teenagers through the media every day.

Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.

What happens to each of my female heroes, certainly, is they find something bigger than themselves that they are honored to serve. It's not giving up your family.

Most important of all, there is no right or wrong way to write - there's only what works for you. I was taught to write every day, but I know a writer (a bestseller at that!) who only writes on weekends.

The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, 'What if I wandered into this writer's people here?' If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, that adds an extra dimension that you can't buy.

With each book, in each place, I have to keep an ongoing map as I write because otherwise I don't know where I am.

If you aren't having fun, if you aren't anxious to find out what happens next as you write, then not only will you run out of steam on the story, but you won't be able to entertain anyone else, either.

One of the things I strive for is realism. I need to be as real as possible in the dilemmas my characters face.

Publishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter and require more topical material than they had been giving them before that. For one thing, they'll read thicker books. Besides, has anybody looked at the news or read the newspapers recently?

I believe that we haven't begun to understand the many forces that bind the physical world, any more than we understand our own minds and what they're capable of.

If we just allowed women and men more leeway in our culture and more acceptance, I think they would be able to make better compromises.

I come from a dysfunctional family, so my views of parents and parenting used to be highly mixed.

You have an audience that is fairly well grounded in the real world. You serve them and yourself best by making everything as real as possible.

I don't write from dreams because I don't remember mine, but I had a fragment of an image left about twins, whose father was telling them how their lives were going to go for the next eight years. I wrote a scene about that, and then another and then another and then another, and after five months I had 732 pages.

My husband and I click wedding rings sometimes and say, 'By the power of the Castle of Greyskull!'

I was nuts for stuff in the Middle Ages when I was just in the third and fourth grades.

If arrogance were shoes, he'd never go barefoot.

There's plenty more fish in the sea than Prince Jonathan," he told her softly. "And this particular fish loves you with all his crooked heart." -George to Alanna

I am not wise, but I can always learn.

You know, ogres only sound stupid. Most are pretty smart." "And it's a shallow person who judges anyone by the way they sound. I'm so shallow I'm surprised I don't reflect myself.

No one expects a woman busy at her sewing to pay attention to what’s being said around her. Nevermind if a man’s mother and sister showerd them they heard everything while they stictched, he’ll still think a woman who plies her needles saves all her brains for the work. You’re a far better spy hemming sheets than if you clank with daggers.

Without reading, we are all without light in the dark, without fire in the cold.

Face it," Gary told her kindly. "You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us--to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.

Sweetheart, never listen to what my enemies say. They're very confused people. I know they are because I've spent years making them that way.

Yes Headwoman Azaze. But I never lie to Rosethorn. She, um, discourages it." "Evvy and I have an understanding." She grabbed the teakettle and poured hot water into the mug. "She tells me the truth, and I don't hang her in the first well we come to. It's a solution that works tolerably well for both of us.

Someday I must read this scholar Everyone. He seems to have written so much--all of it wrong.

Scary with you is better than scary without you

And if wishes were pies, I`d weigh more than I do. Sir Myles of Barony Olau

rosto cupped laddybuck in one hand and grabed the back of my neck with the other pulling me in and kissing me right on the mouth. i should have punched him but his lips were soft and sweet. i will punch him next time. -beka after she realizes that rosto the piper is the new rouge

Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life," murmured Niko. "They bring new food for shore creatures, and take ships out to sea. They are the ocean's pulse, and our own heartbeat.

Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people.

A library is a gateway to others' minds, hearts, and lives.

Threats are the last resort of a man with no vocabulary.

If I were useful, you wouldn't know it was me.

Why do boys say someone acts like a girl as if it were an insult?

I want to marry her, when I grow up to be a man.

Men don't think and differently from women - they just make more noise about being able to.

I think it's fair rude to make him a tree and not know what kind he is.

The bravest person I know is afraid of the dark. She sleeps with a night lamp always, but if her friends are threatened? She suddenly thinks she's a bear twelve feet tall and attacks whoever scared her friends.

A cat understands how to be pleasant in the morning. He doesn't talk.

Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I'm done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense --Reply by Dove to Aly's silent inquiry

You're more trouble than you're worth." "I'm a girl. That's my job.

It's harder to heal than it is to kill.

Didn't they realize that the only way to change things was to act?

Libraries are places where the damaged go to find friends

Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable. Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.

When in doubt, shoot the wizard.

Lord Raoul asked me to tell you that if you get yourself killed, he will never speak to you again.

I truly love our Code of Chivalry. We are taught that noblemen must take everything and say nothing. Noblemen must stand alone. Well, we're men, and men aren't born to stand alone.

Without patience, magic would be undiscovered - in rushing everything, we would never hear its whisper inside.

There is a saying in the Islands. Beware the women of the warrior class, for all they touch is both decorative and deadly.-Yuki

Cats aren't special advisers. They advise us all the time, whether we want them to or no.