I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.

— David Eddings

Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.

— David Eddings

Life’s much more pleasing when you don’t have to spend all of your time thinking.

— David Eddings

Life without any wonder left in it is flat and stale.

— David Eddings

Marion,' she said very calmly, 'the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.' I didn't want them to, Aunt Pol.' There are those of us who aren't given that option, Marion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It's as simple as that.' He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. 'Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?' Can you possibly think of anyone else you'd trust to deal with these matters, Marion?' He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. 'No,' he sighed, 'I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn't even consulted.' Neither was I, Marion,' she answered. 'But we didn't have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.

— David Eddings

Mountains could be what happens when Father Earth eats something that doesn’t agree with him. When he burps, mountains pop up."" That’s absurd," Keel said, trying not to laugh." If you’ve got a better theory, I’d be happy to hear it," Red-Beard said mildly. "Anyway, a burp isn’t anything but air that boils up out of a man’s stomach, so Father Earth’s mountains have chunks of empty air in the middle of them—burps that didn’t quite manage to make it to the surface, you understand.

— David Eddings

Nobles and peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.

— David Eddings

Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything. That's what education's all about.

— David Eddings

...only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.

— David Eddings

Organ tried his very best not to think about how long it must have taken for a stream that small to eat its way down through solid rock to form its current bed. Organ knew exactly what the word “hundred” meant, but when numbers wandered off toward “thousand”—or even “million”—and the people who used those terms were talking about years, Organ’s mind shied back in horror.

— David Eddings