What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that's what we have to sustain us in our endeavors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.

Terry Brooks

Categorized in : Identity Where We Come Adrift

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.

Terry Brooks

magic world fall

We forget that what matters begins with the imagination.

Terry Brooks

what-matters imagination matter

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.

Terry Brooks

one-day energy fire

We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.

Terry Brooks

and-love real way

Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing. Visions born of hope give birth to our success. What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.

Terry Brooks

vision giving firsts

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

Terry Brooks

too-much heart writing

Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.

Terry Brooks

ifs

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

Terry Brooks

temper use fire

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

Terry Brooks

anger hurt travel

The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.

Terry Brooks

muse writing might

This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.

Terry Brooks

writing believe thinking

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.

Terry Brooks

results chance choices

On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind - to put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up.

Terry Brooks

stress writing book

In bad weather, I spent hours drawing action figures on paper, coloring them, backing them on cardboard, then cutting them out and creating whole stories around their lives.

Terry Brooks

drawing cutting weather

You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.

Terry Brooks

identity struggle thinking

Fantasy is the only canvas large enough for me to paint on.

Terry Brooks

canvas fantasy enough

Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.

Terry Brooks

different self character

Who would you be but who you are?

Terry Brooks

individualism who-you-are

We should not be less than what we are.

Terry Brooks

should

The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present

Terry Brooks

mazes shifting possibility