The Fate of the Tearling Quotes

“Christ, let's go."
"Women shouldn't curse."
"Get fucked.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“as always, the story was the compelling thing, worth all of its suffering to find out the ending”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“I missed you, Lazarus. More than I missed the sunlight, even.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Our species is capable of altruism, certainly, but it is not a game we play willingly, let alone well.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Sometimes I think: if they want to walk around armed and build fences and let a church tell them what to do, let them wallow in it. They can build their own town of closed thinking, and live there, and find out later what a shitty place it really is.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Entire countries would close their borders and build walls to keep out phantom threats. Can you imagine?”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Learn all the knowledge in the world, but your gut will always know best.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“This, I think, is the crux of evil in this world, Majesty: those who feel entitled to anything they want, anything they can grab.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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. —The Glynn Queen’s Words,”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. Lazarus,”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“You are special, everyone is special. But you are not better. All are valuable.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Few things are more dangerous to an egalitarian ideal than the concept of a chosen people.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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)”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“There was no quick and easy eradication of evil. There was only the passage of time, of generations, of people raising children who would hold all other lives just as valuable as their own.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“I put my trust in fiction”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“The Tearling... I told them not to name things after me. - William Tear”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“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!”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Lady, if you don’t wake up, I’m going to have you baptized.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“They had fought and starved and even died in pursuit of mankind's oldest dream, but they hadn't known that Tear's vision was flawed. Too easy. Utopia was not the clean slate Tear had imagined, but an evolution. Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It would take generations, countless generations perhaps, but--”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“He doesn't need to be perfect, she decided suddenly. The idea is perfect, and the idea is bigger than the man.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“The future cannot be divorced from the past.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“A church was only as good or bad as the philosophy that emanated from the pulpit.”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“small-mindedness fed off religion just as surely as the other way around—but”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“But even if safety were somehow achievable by force, Lear, ask yourself this: how important is safety? Is it worth steadily undermining every principle on which a free nation was founded? What sort of nation will you have then?”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling

“Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling