Erika Johansen Quotes

My responsibility, she thought, and the idea brought no fear now, only an extraordinary sense of gratitude.
My kingdom.

Learn all the knowledge in the world, but your gut will always know best.

Memory cut infinitely deeper than swords;

Those who cease to worry about their souls often find them difficult to reclaim later

They're good, these stories," Mace continued, his cheeks stained with light color. "They teach the pain of others." "Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers.

There's no other life for me. Anyway, clemency wouldn't begin to repay your debt. I've given you a greater gift than you know."
"What gift?"
"You'll find out. In return, I expect you to keep it safe."
Kelsea turned back to the mirror. "Great God, tell me you didn't impregnate me while I slept."
The fetch threw back his head and roared with laughter. He placed a friendly hand on Kelsea's back, making her skin prickle. "Tear Queen, you'll either be dead within a week or you'll be the most fearsome ruler this kingdom has ever known. I see no middle ground.

The Tearling... I told them not to name things after me. - William Tear

Pen will no longer be your close guard, Lady," Mace said flatly.
"What?"
"Starting tonight, Elston will take over Pen's duties."
Kelsea turned to stare at Pen, who in turn stared at the floor."
"What's happened?" she demanded.
"I'll give you two a few minutes, but only a few," Mace replied, speaking to Pen. "After that, you will not be alone together again."
Pen nodded, but Kelsea turned on Mace.
"You don't make changes to my Guard behind my back, Lazarus! I didn't ask for a new close guard. This isn't your decision."
"No, Lady," Pen said. "It's mine.

Only a fool blames the dealer

One night she'd stayed up until dawn reading a particularly long novel, and she had been allowed to skip her chores and sleep away most of the next day.

Rulers who attempt to control an unwilling populace govern nothing, and often find their heads atop a pike to boot.

The mark of the true hero is that the most heroic of his deeds is done in secret. We never hear of it. And yet somehow, my friends, we know. - Father Tyler's Collected Sermons, FROM THE ARVATH ARCHIVE

Kelsea saw now that there was something far worse than being ugly: being ugly and thinking you were beautiful.

Christ, let's go."
"Women shouldn't curse."
"Get fucked.

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My final word is for the readers. The Tearling is not an easy world, I know. Contrarian that I am, I am determined to make thins kingdom echo life, where answers to our questions are not delivered neatly in a beautiful expositional package, but must be earned, through experience and frustration, sometimes even tears (and believe me, not all of those tears are Kelsea's). Sometimes answers never come at all. To all of the readers who stuck with this story, understanding and sometimes even enjoying the fact that the Tearling is a gradually unfolding world, full of lost and often confounding history, thank you for your faith in the concept. I hope that your patience was rewarded in the end. Now let's all go and make a better world." (Afterwords of the author)

This country is diseased. The fortunate celebrate on the backs of the starving, the ill, the terrorised. The law affords no recourse to the disadvantaged. That's a historical sickness, and there's only one cure.

Tyler did not believe in hell. He had decided, long ago, that if God wanted to punish them, there was infinite opportunity right here; hell would be superfluous.
But if there was a hell on earth, Tyler had certainly found it.

as always, the story was the compelling thing, worth all of its suffering to find out the ending

Fortune favors the bold, history tells us. Therefore, it behooves us to be as bold as possible.

The hawk ripped out his jugular, spraying the morning sunlight with a fine mist of blood.

Love was a real thing, Aisa thought, but secondary. Certainly love was not as real as her sword.

When it fails, they do call it madness, Lazarus. But when it succeeds, they call it genius.

Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise.

She was unable to keep silent, even when silence would save her trouble or pain.

Beware the past, Kelsea. Be a steward.

And if Tear's words can't be trusted, then who do we listen to? Yourself. The

Lady, if you don't wake up, I'm going to have you baptized.

I see that you have a knife behind your back... You will drop your knife. - Ewen, to Brenna

Your Majesty's rescuer said a true thing, and one that's stayed with me. Often the direct way is the right way, for reasons that can't be foreseen.

This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to whatever they want, whatever they can grab. Such people never ask themselves if they have the right. They consider no cost to anyone but themselves.

Everyone dies eventually. I think it's better to die clean.

And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries past? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapse.

The mistake of utopia is to assume that all will be perfect. Perfection may be the definition, but we are human, and even into uopia we bring our own pain, error, jealousy, grief. We cannot relinquish out faults, even in the hope of Paradise, so to plan a new society without taking human nature into account is to doom that society to failure.

I don't want to die, Arlen, but I would lay down my life for any of these men, or they for me. That's a real thing, sacrifice, but you will never understand it.

Once she was gone, Pen bowed and said, "Good night, Lady."
"You don't have to bow to me, Pen."
Humor sparked in Pen's eyes, but he said nothing, only bowed again before retreating into his anteroom and drawing the curtain.

This is how women are trained to stay indoors, she thought, the idea echoing in her mind like a gravesong. This is how women are trained not to act.

An upset stomach was a small price to pay for fiction made real.

The problems of the past.
How the problems of the past, uncorrected, inevitably became the problems of the future.

Names made a thing real.

It's just … difficult."
"You've noticed the change in her, then."
"I never cared which face she wore."
"Ah. So this isn't new."
"No."
"That makes it worse, I think.

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These people are so damned proud of their hatred! Hatred is easy, and lazy to boot. It's love that demands effort, love that exacts a price from each of us. Love costs; this is its value.

I'll govern for the good of the governed.
I'll make sure every citizen is properly educated and doctored.
I'll cease wasteful spending and ease the burden on the poor through redistribution of land and goods and taxation.

But even Carlin's words had no weight when fury washed over Kelsea; it was a tide that cleared all obstacles.

Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

Weakness, all the more dangerous for being combined with a sense of entitlement

Hell? Hell is a fairy tale for the gullible, for what punishment could be worse than that we inflict upon ourselves? We burn so badly in this life that there can be nothing left.

Stick with hard copies; they're harder to alter after publication. In the better world, there won't be any electronics at all.

Selfishness and self-destruction, riding hand in hand, as they so often did.

The butterfly effect deals in the tendency of infinitesimal variations to amplify over time. ""You never play around with history, because the change you thought you were making for the better is likely to cause so many unforeseen ripples that it may well add up to a net loss. Too many variables to control the outcome.

Some people were simply broken, something inside them grown wrong and twisted.

You win your people or you lose your throne.

Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. Lazarus,

We're coming to the point where I may need to split my men to evade pursuit. If so, my choice of bodyguard for you will depend much on your won abilities."
"Well, I am a fast reader, and I know how to make stew."
Carroll nodded in approval "You've a sense of humor about all this, Lady. You'll need one. You're entering a life of great danger.

I'm sober."
"That's not my concern. I know you'll never make that mistake again."
"Then what's your concern?" the younger man asked, his tone aggressive.
"You and her.

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Always, we think we know what courage means. If I were called upon, we say, I would answer the call. I would not hesitate. Until the moment is upon us, and then we realize that the demands of true courage are very different from what we had envisioned, long ago on that bright morning when we felt brave.

Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It

I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.

Carlin often said that history was everything, for it was in man's nature to make the same mistakes over and over.

Not just a thief, but a murderer as well. Beneath the handsome man, Kelsea sensed another man, a terrible one, with a life as black as the water in an ice-covered lake. A murderer many, many times.
The idea should have brought horror. Kelsea waited for a long moment, bu what came instead was an even worse realization: it didn't matter at all.

I missed you, Lazarus. More than I missed the sunlight, even.

They had found the seven volumes of Rowling with no help at all, but there was no squabbling.

Kelsea stared at it for a long moment, then turned to Pen.
"Go away."
"Lady - "
"What?"
Pen splayed his hands. "Things can't remain like this forever. We have to move past what happened."
"I have moved past it!"
"You haven't." Pen spoke quietly, but Kelsea heard the low hum of anger in his voice.
"It was a weak moment, and it won't repeat."
"I'm a Queen's Guard, Lady. You have to understand that."
"I understand that you're just like every other man in the world. Get out."
Pen's breath hissed through his teeth, and Kelsea was pleased to see real pain in his eyes for a moment before he retreated to his antechamber.

Katie preferred honesty, even at the expense of civility. She longed to have everything in the open.

You think I don't care about my people, but I do... - The Red Queen

Vallee had taken an arrow in the knee from a sniper.

There's danger in the system of justice that makes no allowance for circumstance.

It's all right lady," Pen murmured. "I won't let you fall.

Rape's a weapon of war. The women got over it.

The future was only disasters of the past, waiting to happen anew.

If they want to walk around armed and build fences and let a church tell them what to do, let them wallow in it.

Kelsea didn't recognize the guard, but she knew his voice. After a moment she realized, bemused, that it was Dyer. He'd shaved his red beard.
"Dyer, is that your face under there?"
Dyer flushed bright red. Pen snorted gleefully, and Kibb clapped Dyer on the back. "I told him, Lady...now we can see every time he blushes.

Are you my father, Lazarus?"
Mace's mouth twisted. "No, Lady. I wish I was. I wanted to be. But I am not.

It's a real thing, glory. But it pales in comparison to what we sacrifice for it.

Carlin always said that most men were dogs, and Kelsea had never taken her seriously; there were too many good books written by men.

You haven't forgiven me, Lazarus."
He remained silent.
"What did you expect me to do?"
"Tell us, dammit! I would have gone with you."
"Of course you would have, Lazarus. But I thought I was going to die. Why would I ask anyone to follow me there?"
"Because it's my job!" he roared, and his voice seemed to shake the timbers of the tiny space. "It's what I signed on for! The choice was mine, not yours!

The King of Cadare cannot have an alliance on an equal footing with a woman. Marriage ensures that Your Majesty is seen to submit her will to my master in all things."
Mace moved in sharply, blocking off Kelsea's right side. She blinked in surprise, for she had sensed no threat from the ambassador or his guards. It took a few moments for her to see it: Mace had actually moved to protect the ambassador. Some of Kelsea's anger ebbed away then; she smiled at Mace, and felt a rush of affection when he smiled back.

Corruption begins with a single moment of weakness.

Majesty. The word seemed to ripple through her. "I haven't been crowned, Lazarus." "No matter, Lady. I see the queenship in you, and I never saw it in your mother, not one day of her life.

Few things are more dangerous to an egalitarian ideal than the concept of a chosen people, and the divide drawn by the early iteration of God's Church helped to exacerbate the many ideological faults that already underlay the landscape. When they chips were down, Tear's people were ready to turn on each other, and the fall of the Town was very quick, so quick that this historian wonders whether all such communities are not destined to fail. Our species is capable of altruism, certainly, but it is not a game we play willingly, let alone well

What of that woman you've found?" the Mace asked. "Does she offer no relief at all?"
Pen laughed without humor. "Ten minutes of relief, every time."
"We can find another shield, you know," the Mace told him. "Several of them are ready. Elston would jump at the chance."
"No. It would be a greater torment to be out of the room than in."
"You say that now, but think, Pen. Think about when she takes a husband, or even just a man for the night. How will you feel then, being right outside the door?"
"She may not take either.

She had been ready to kill Da, ready for years, but now she was amazed to find that she had done something even more difficult: she had spoken aloud.

She looked at the land around her, the deep amber of the wheat cut by the yellow line of the road, and wished that she could make it a softer world.

Shit," she muttered. She'd heard the word from her guard many times, but only now did she understand the real use of profanity. That one word said exactly what she was feeling, said it better than a hundred other words could have done.