I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Homered.

— Juliet Marillier

Let there be a time in the future, I prayed, when he laughs with his children, and plays on the shore with them, and spends all his nights in loving arms. Let us have that. To whom I was praying I did not know. The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.

— Juliet Marillier

Look forward, not back," the Hag said. "All is change. Do not regret. Instead, learn.

— Juliet Marillier

My world was changing, and I was not ready for it.

— Juliet Marillier

Not all were joyful tales; we needed to acknowledge that love was not just kisses, smiles, and fulfillment, but also sacrifice, compromise, and hard work.

— Juliet Marillier

Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the deep places of the earth, in the lap of wavelets on the shore, in the breath of the wind. He had learned that there were other kinds of courage. He knew, with deep certainty, that the islands held a new path for him. Furthermore, he needs only move forward and find it.

— Juliet Marillier

Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt hollow and empty and aching.

— Juliet Marillier

The error was not yours, Homered," Elvin said quietly, moving to the doorway. "It was mine. I failed to teach you the one lesson you could not do without: how to be a man.

— Juliet Marillier

The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.

— Juliet Marillier

The man journeyed far, and he heard and saw many strange things on his travels. He learned that - that the friend and the enemy are but two faces of the same self. That the path one believes chosen long since, constant and unchangeable, straight and wide, can alter in an instant. Can branch, and twist and lead the traveler to places far beyond his wildest imaginings. That there are mysteries beyond the mind of mortal man, and that to deny their existence is to spend a life of half-consciousness.

— Juliet Marillier