Terry Goodkind
Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed.Collection: Knowledge
Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it.Collection: Alone
The first step to believing something is true is wanting to believe it is true... or being afraid it is.
I felt like I'd been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine.
I've always said fantasy is sort of 'stealth philosophy'.
No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.
If God is so powerful, can he create a rock which he cannot lift?
The worse you are at thinking, the better you are at drinking.
After that, I came back every year. Everyone said, 'Well, when you retire you can move there.' But I said, 'Why should I live my whole life where I don't want to be.'
After the book took off, I bought a whole new wardrobe.
Ever since I was really little, I've had characters that were in my mind.
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.
I don't think I could have written what I did any earlier.
I had to live this long, have the experiences I've had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn't blow it. The move to Maine was the final step.
I hate telling that story to people who've been struggling for years.
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!
They look at me and I kind of back up in case they go for my throat.
If the road is easy, you're likely going the wrong way.Collection: Truth
Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.Collection: Guilty
The Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything.Collection: Motivation
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.Collection: Goes On
Love is a passion for life shared with another person. You fall in love with a person who you think is wonderful. It's your deepest appreciation of the value of that individual, and that individual is a reflection of what you value most in life. Love, for sound reasons, can be one of life's greatest rewards.Collection: Appreciation
We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.Collection: Helping Others
...you'll find that being a friend is to like a person for who they are, even the parts you don't understand. You don't have to understand, or do the same, or live their lives for them. If you truly care for them, then you want them to be who they are; that was why you liked them in the first place.Collection: Friendship
The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -RichardCollection: Mean
I'm afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can't be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.Collection: Giving Up
Only a fool walks into the future backwards.Collection: Fool
Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning.Collection: Admitting
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.Collection: People
If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.Collection: Men
People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.Collection: Lying
Think of the solution, not the problemCollection: Thinking
Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.Collection: Steps
When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.Collection: Crazy
Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Choices
Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.Collection: Mean
Nothing marks a man's character better than his attraction to intelligence.Collection: Character
Knowing when to fight is just as important as knowing how.Collection: Fighting
Once you place that crown of liar on your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.Collection: Honesty
Dance with me, Death, I am ready.Collection: Ready
Wizard's Eighth Rule Talga Vassternich. (Deserve Victory)Collection: Victory
Fools who won't see the truth are deadly.Collection: Fool
Everybody knows it. Wizards are supposed to have beards. It's common knowledge.Collection: Wizards
Richard started to walk away. Zedd called his name. He stopped and turned. Just be glad she cares for you as much as she does. If she didn't, she might have touched you." Richard stared back at him a long moment. "I'm afraid, in a way, she already has.Collection: Names
The mice think they are right, but my cat eats them anyways. This is the point, reality is nothing, perception is everything.Collection: Cat
I will have to admit, though, that I will never look at an apple in quite the same way.Collection: Apples
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.Collection: Children
Why should I live my whole life where I don't want to be. [it's a good point - pretty hard to argue with that sort of logic really isn't it!Collection: Want
It's only some rice and beans Captain. It's not like I'm giving you Cara's hand in marriage." - RichardCollection: Hands