Inspirational Phrases
A compilation of quotes for this quarrelsome climate
I first started writing in my early 20s, not long after I dropped out of college to watch the Gulf War. My roommate and I both worked crappy jobs that left us tired and with little time or money to socialize, so we holed up in our rooms and read.
I had read Tolkien in high school, and had loved his language even then. Now, as my roommate and I read Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind and Tad Williamson, as I drifted slowly toward becoming a writer, we kept a notebook of what we called “cool quotes.”
I kept that notebook for years. When my daughters were born and I began to read to them, I wrote down lines I liked from children’s books. When I started trying to write music I copied music lyrics into it. I still jot down phrases I like.
So this is my attempt to, sort of, recreate, that old cool quotes notebook. I say sort of because I’m not going to try to recall the actual quotes my friend and I found way back in that little apartment in Russellville Arkansas where I first began to write, to fall in love with words, to recognize their power to move us to worlds beyond our own.
Instead, I’m creating a new list, one for today, March 6, 2026. A new war has just begun, and I bet a lot of you need an uplifting. A pick-me-up, a pep talk, a powerful phrase or two to get you through the news cycle. Some words of comfort for these querulous and quarrelsome times. Like Bonnie Tyler in 1984, we need a hero.
So here are some of my favorite fantasy quotes, with a few quotes from other genres, such as the children’s books I read to my daughters, and music, sprinkled throughout. This is not meant to be comprehensive, by any means—feel free to add your own.
Remember, friends, we’re here to help each other, and words are all we have.
The Litany Against Fear
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
—Dune, Frank Herbert
(I recite this on airplanes to combat anxiety. It works, especially when I recite it after taking Xanax.)
Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.
Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. . .
Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.
—Shel Silverstein
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
—JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
Until shade is gone, until water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.
—Aiel saying, The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan. (In the world of The Wheel of Time, Sightblinder is the Aiel name for Shaitan, or Satan. The Last Day is the batttle of Tarmon Gai’don, which sounds a lot like Armageddon.)
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” he said. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
—The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.. . .That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it’s worth fighting for.
—Samwise Gamgee, LOTR
How very special are we, for just a moment, to be part of life’s eternal rhyme?
—E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
“Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”
—E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called life.
—Terry Pratchett
She had blue skin, And so did he.
He kept it hid, And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by-
And never knew.
—Shel Silverstein
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
—Rumi
Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.
—Winnie the Pooh
The more he gave away, the more delighted he became.
—Marcus Pfister, The Rainbow Fish
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
—Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
—Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
—The Little White Bird by J.M. Barrie
Let all that you do be done in love.
—1 Corinthians 16:14
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
—JRR Tolkien, Return of the King
“I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “that I when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind
I am the one thing you can never kill. I am Hope.
—Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire
You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.
—al’Lan Mandragoran. Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
If I knew the way, I would take you home.
—The Grateful Dead
This land was made for you and me.
—Woody Guthrie
If you enjoyed this post, please let me know. I enjoyed putting it together, revisiting old words, and I’m already thinking about another one.
A book like this has a name. It's called a Common Book. I've kept one for years. Here is one of my faves.
"We accept the love we think we deserve."
~Stephen Chobsky, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
Lovely stuff, man. I need things like this to come back to right now.
My wife, Emma, has E.B. White's/Charlotte's words tattooed across her inner forearms: "This lovely world / these precious days." That one gets me.
Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book as a kid, and my kids' favorite, too. My daughter was/is such a deeply sensitive soul, and given all the hard days that come with that, curling up and reading Winnie the Pooh with her was always the loveliest.
“'I don’t feel very much like Pooh today,' said Pooh. 'There, there,' said Piglet. 'I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.'
—A.A. Milne