Terry Brooks Quotes

If you don't think there is magic in writing, you probably won't write anything magical.

If you do not love what you do, if you are not appropriately grateful for the chance to create something magical each time you sit down at the computer or with a pencil and paper in hand, somewhere along the way your writing will betray you.

Fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.

When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.

Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.

Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.

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.

If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.

I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore.

The reader wants to see something happen between pages one and four hundred, and nothing happens if the characters don't change.

...[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.

Friendship doesn't have anything to do with shoring up weakness. It has to do with respect and consideration for those you care about. It has to do with wanting to give something back to those you admire.

We forget that what matters begins with the imagination.

The Golden Compass is one of the best fantasy / adventure stories that I have read. This is a book no one should miss.

The unicorns were the most recognizable magic the fairies possessed, and they sent them to those worlds where belief in the magic was in danger of falling altogether. After all there has to be some belief in magic- however small- for any world to survive.

What you write chooses you.

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.

If I have the means, I have the responsibility to employ them.

For a writer, its very attractive to stay in one world for a time.

What I want to write about has changed somewhat, and the scope of the storytelling has changed accordingly.

You shouldn't believe everything you hear you're young, not stupid.

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

THE NAME OF THE WIND marks the debut of a writer we would all do well to watch. Patrick Rothfuss has real talent, and his tale of Kvothe is deep and intricate and wondrous.

We are constantly being put to the test by trying circumstances and difficult people and problems not necessarily of our own making.

I haven't made up my mind about doing anymore Landover books.

I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends.

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.

Lester del Rey told me repeatedly that the first and most important part of writing fiction is just to think about the story. Don't write anything down. Don't try to pull anything together right away. Just dream for a while and see what happens. There isn't any timetable involved, no measuring stick for how long it ought to take. For each book, it is different. But that period of thinking, of reflection, is crucial to how successful your story will turn out to be.

The more complex and overwhelming the threat to a protagonist, the better the opportunity for the author to create a compelling conflict and a dramatic resolution.

Let me tell you something you haven't learned 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." He smiled.