Terry Goodkind Quotes & Sayings

There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and everything you do know. — Terry Goodkind

The room, rather than breaking into whispering, as Dalton expected, fell into a stunned, dead silence. Dalton then realized, for the first time, really, that he had been born and lived his entire life under the reign of the old Sovereign. An era had ended. Many in the room had to be thinking the same thing. — Terry Goodkind

Being afraid something is true is accepting the possibility. Accepting the possibility is the first step to believing. — Terry Goodkind

Franca smiled to herself for a time before she spoke. My heart belongs to someone. — Terry Goodkind

Honor is honesty to what is, not blind duty to what you wish to be. — Terry Goodkind

Truth is hard to sell; it gives no sense of purpose. It is simply truth. — Terry Goodkind

Wizard's Fourth Rule
There is magic in sincere forgiveness; in the forgiveness you give, but more so in the forgiveness you receive. — Terry Goodkind

Your destiny is to find the truth. — Terry Goodkind

The entire mass of people before the palace erupted in a deafening roar. And then, as one, they lunged forward. — Terry Goodkind

Oftentimes it's easier for lunatics to attract impassioned followers than it is for sensible people to get people to listen to reason. People are often more willing to believe lies than the truth. Lies can be made to sound pleasant. The truth, by its very nature, isn't always so attractive. — Terry Goodkind

Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere. — Terry Goodkind

To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us. Life is the gift each of us has been given. Each life is our own and no one else's. It is precious beyond all counting. It is the greatest value we can have. Cherish it for what it truly is ... Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it. — Terry Goodkind

Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people's minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before. — Terry Goodkind

Wrong doing must be punished. If not, it will proliferate until anarchy wears the robes of tolerance and understanding. — Terry Goodkind

Maybe I would like to see beauty again before I die." "Bah. What would you carve? What would you see before you die? What could be worth your life?" "Man's nobility - the most sublime form of beauty. — Terry Goodkind

Wizard's Ninth Rule
A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole. — Terry Goodkind

Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent. -Kahlan — Terry Goodkind

Perception was easily accomplished, required little effort, and it never had to stand the test of reality. — Terry Goodkind

Not all choices in life are ones you would like, but those are all that are presented to you. Sometimes you must choose what is better for the ones you love than yourself. — Terry Goodkind

Emotions are the sums created by details, whether those details are true or not. — Terry Goodkind

Because I need it to be mine alone while I carve it. I need solitude with it as I shape it. When I'm finished, then the world can have it, but when I work on it, it is to be my vision and mine alone. I wish no one to see it before it is finished. — Terry Goodkind

Once lucky, twice confident, and thrice dead. — Terry Goodkind

But if used for retribution, magic is vengeance incarnate. — Terry Goodkind

What is commonly thought luck is often merely the result of incessant practice. — Terry Goodkind

The reason, as I had learned from my father, is that there is no certainty in death. Because there is no beginning or end, there is no way to measure how long your time. — Terry Goodkind

By my love for you. I realized I loved you more than life itself, and I would rather give myself into your power than live without you. Nothing the magic could do to me could be worse than living without you. I was willing to give it all over to you. I offered the power everything I have. All of my love for you. Once I realized how much I loved you, I was willing to be yours on any terms. I understood that there could be nothing for the magic to harm. I'm already devoted to you; it didn't need to change me. I was protected, because I have already been untouched by your love. I had utter faith that you felt the same, and had no fear of what would happen. Had I had any doubt, the magic would have latched on to that crack and taken me, but I had no doubt. My love for you is smooth and seamless. My love for you protected me from the magic. — Terry Goodkind

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so. — Terry Goodkind

Really? A Confession flower. Why would it be called that? Because a confession is a revelation of the truth. Truth is pure. White is pure. Thus the name. — Terry Goodkind

I add my oath of protection to the bone,' he said in a whisper. 'To you now and to any child you may bear in the future. I would trade no day I spend with you for a life of safe slavery. I accepted the post of Seeker of my own free will. And if Darken Rahl takes the whole world into madness, then we will die with a sword in our hands, not chains on our wings. We will not allow it to be easy for them to kill us; they will pay a high price. We will fight with our last breath if need be, and in our death, let us inflict a wound on him that will fester until it claims him. — Terry Goodkind

Alone, he must bear the weight of a sin he dare not confess to the one person he loves ... and has lost. — Terry Goodkind

A Grace connected creating the World of life, and the world of the dead in pathways of magic. — Terry Goodkind

It is a mistake to say something cannot be done simply because you don't know how to do it. — Terry Goodkind

I think old age is nature's way of preparing us for death, making us more willing to take our leave of this world. — Terry Goodkind

There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion. — Terry Goodkind

She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another's desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters. — Terry Goodkind

Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can't stand by and watch. I have to act. — Terry Goodkind

Fate occasionally touches us all in ways we don't always understand ... — Terry Goodkind

I'm sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don't think you are the kind of man who would want me to tell you anything other than the truth." Richard stared into Samantha's dark eyes. "No, I wouldn't. Only the truth can help us. — Terry Goodkind

Magda smiled. I'm familiar with strange objects left in corners. My husband was a maker, though I rarely heard that name applied to him. — Terry Goodkind

I hate telling that story to people who've been struggling for years. — Terry Goodkind

Her heart nearly burst as she at last plunged into his embrace in one wild rush, screaming out her need, her love, her completion, wanting only to know his name so she might give everything of herself to him. His glowing smile was for her and her alone. His lips were for her and her alone. She closed that last bit of space toward him, longing to at last kiss the love of her life, the mate to her soul, the one and only true passion in all of life.
His lips were there, at last, she fell into his outstretched arms, into his embrace, into his perfect kiss.
In that flawless instant when her lips were just touching his, she saw through him, just beyond him, the merciless unyeilding valley floor hurtling up toward her, and she knew at last his name.
Death. — Terry Goodkind

Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story. — Terry Goodkind

The only sovereign we could allow to rule us is reason. — Terry Goodkind

Wizard's Eleventh and Final Rule
The "Rule Unspoken", the "Rule Unwritten", "The rule from the beginning of time. — Terry Goodkind

Little things are a good place to start. Larger understanding is built on little things. We put those little things we learn together into larger concepts. — Terry Goodkind

What are half-people? Living people he has stripped of their souls. — Terry Goodkind

Zedd used to tell me that if the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way. - Richard — Terry Goodkind

The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don't want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate. — Terry Goodkind

Laugh all you want. I know my own worth and don't need to prove it to someone who doesn't know theirs. — Terry Goodkind

No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side. — Terry Goodkind

Over the millennia the seed of stories planted in the fertile soil of bits and scraps of facts was watered by wishes and began to take root and grow. Eventually, a bountiful fruit of rumors burst forth, to be spread on the wind of whispers that said we hid a fabled hoard of gold. Nothing could convince the believers that it was not true. The truth does not glitter for these people like gold does. — Terry Goodkind

He put the box in Kahlan's lap. As she picked it up, she gave him the biggest smile he had ever seen. Before he even knew what he had done, he had leaned over and given Kahlan a quick kiss. Her eyes went wide, and she didn't kiss him back, but the feel of her lips shocked him into realizing what he had done.
Oh. Sorry," he said.
She laughed. "Forgiven. — Terry Goodkind

Zedd had taught him that the creator was simply another name for the force of balance in all things, and not some wise man sitting in judgment. — Terry Goodkind

I'd rather look a fool than be right and fail to act. — Terry Goodkind

Baraccus had told her that while a number of wizards could make things, the same as the ungifted could make things, it was this component of artistic ability in creating new things that took to to another level and made the makers more than true prophets. Magda remembered the passion in his voice as he told her about such things. Making things was in his soul. Creating new things seemed to be his spark of life. — Terry Goodkind

History, like memories themselves, tended to become distorted with the passing of time, or worse, corrupted with the agendas of those writing it. — Terry Goodkind

Deception to a noble end, though regrettable, was sometimes necessary for a greater good. Lying for selfish reasons was the fertile dirt of immorality, from which sprouted the tendrils of evil. — Terry Goodkind

Wizard's Third Rule
Passion rules reason, for better or for worse. — Terry Goodkind

The first step to believing something is true is wanting to believe it is true ... or being afraid it is. — Terry Goodkind

I don't think I could have written what I did any earlier. — Terry Goodkind

People whose magic could affect others in an overt manner didn't need to bite, he imagined, nor would they allow themselves to be held captive — Terry Goodkind

The sweltering darkness and vast weight of the surrounding silence seemed as eternal as death itself. — Terry Goodkind

This was the threshold to the place of the dead. — Terry Goodkind

Wizard's Sixth Rule
The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason. — Terry Goodkind

Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters. — Terry Goodkind

Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor. — Terry Goodkind

The people who most often invited trouble were the willfully ignorant who didn't want to believe trouble was possible, so they dismissed the potential for it. You couldn't be ready for what you never considered or were unwilling to consider. — Terry Goodkind

Magic intensifies and concentrates passions, strengthening not only joy, but ruinous passions as well, and in this way they may become obsessions, and unbearable unless released. -Joseph Anders — Terry Goodkind

The truth has value. — Terry Goodkind

We have people like that in our world, too. People who say that freedom is no longer practical, that we must surrender it for a greater common good." "Fear them," she whispered. "They are the heart of evil. They tolerate tyranny, excuse it, compromise with it. In so doing they always bring savagery and death upon the rest of us. — Terry Goodkind

Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into the enemy's strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don't allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit.
-Richard Rahl — Terry Goodkind

Free people were not ruled. Freedom had first to be valued before its existence could be demanded. — Terry Goodkind

You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. — Terry Goodkind

And right now you're doing it backwards. You are only concentrating on why the problem is impossible. You are not thinking of the solution. — Terry Goodkind

We have a responsibility to life. The living should be our only concern. Since it is the Sword of Truth - a weapon created to fight for the truth - people won't have reason to expect that it could also actually be the key to the power of Orden. Quinn, you know how dangerous the power of Orden is. Used in the wrong way. it very well could breach the veil and destroy the world of life. We have to do everything in our power to see to it that such a thing never comes to pass. — Terry Goodkind

It allows you to say things that sound very dramatic and get away with it. If you had characters in modern fiction say the same things as they're driving down the street in an Oldsmobile they'd sound ludicrous! — Terry Goodkind

Richard," Kahlan said, "what about Siddin? Weselan and Savidlin will be worried sick over him." Her green eyes gazed deep into his. She leaned closer, and whispered, "And we have unfinished business in the spirit house. I believe there is still an apple there we have yet to finish." Her arm tightened around his waist, and a little twist of a smile came to her lips. The shape of the smile caught his breath in his throat. — Terry Goodkind

Freedom requires effort if it is to be won and vigilance if it is to be maintained. People just don't value freedom until it is taken away. — Terry Goodkind

To love another, you must first love yourself. Love yourself, Magda, so you can love him. Love yourself enough to let your memories of me ease away from closing your heart. Love yourself enough to know that you deserve happiness. - Barracus — Terry Goodkind

They don't, exactly. The threat of their intervention makes it unnecessary. Wizards call it the paradox of power: if you have power, and are ready, able, and willing to use it, you don't need to exercise your power. — Terry Goodkind

There is magic in sincere forgiveness - magic to heal. — Terry Goodkind

Think of the solution, not the problem — Terry Goodkind

I know you and I know the way you feel, but you have to listen to me. The time has not yet come. It may never come. You may think I'm wrong in this, but if you close your eyes to the reality of what is, in favor of what you would wish just because you're the Mother Confessor and feel responsible for the people of the Midlands, then there is no reason for us to bother hoping we'll be together again because we won't. We will be dead, and the cause of freedom will be dead. — Terry Goodkind

Cara burst into a hearty laugh. She clapped Richard on the back as he walked passed. I like her, Lord Rahl. You may keep her. — Terry Goodkind

In the darkest hours we must believe in ourselves. — Terry Goodkind

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool. — Terry Goodkind

Kahlan ambled toward the door. "Well, my breasts aren't as large as yours Berdine." She slowed as she passed Raina. "I think Raina's hands would fit mine better. — Terry Goodkind

One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. — Terry Goodkind

Nothing is ever easy. — Terry Goodkind

Once you place that crown of liar on your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time. — Terry Goodkind

I felt like I'd been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine. — Terry Goodkind

He slipped the baldric over his head, laying the leather across his shoulder and the scabbard at his hip. Knowing the weapon a little more intimately, now, he had a new respect for it. — Terry Goodkind

Thunder without sound jolted the air around her. The violence of it was magnificent, immaculate, glorious. — Terry Goodkind

When yo hold your nose so high in the air, you can't see where you are going. — Terry Goodkind

When the son, a lanky young man, saw Kahlan, he fell instantly and hopelessly in love. Richard understood the feeling; nonetheless, he didn't appreciate it. — Terry Goodkind

If you regain your senses, come see me, I will teach you how. - Cara — Terry Goodkind

Righteous anger could be a valuable tool, but it needed to be rational anger. Anger against evil. Anger against wrongs. It had to be wielded the same way any weapon was wielded. It needed to be wielded with reasoned wisdom tempered with maturity. It had to be respected for the damage it could do not only to evil, but also to the innocent. He knew that sometimes ability grew faster than the sense to know when not to use it, like a young man who grew muscles before growing wise enough not to be easily provoked into using them. — Terry Goodkind

Your actions, not your feelings, speak the truth of your intent." Richard — Terry Goodkind

This is how tyrants win the will of the people: with lies. — Terry Goodkind

It didn't matter how hard you could swing a sword, if you couldn't hit anything. — Terry Goodkind