Quotes from The Riddle

Alison Croggon ·  490 pages

Rating: (18.7K votes)


“Love is one of the true mysteries,' he said at last. 'The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Never be ashamed of your love," he said gently. "The only thing to be ashamed of is denying your love. That is what makes the shadow grow within your heart; that is the darkening of the Light. And we all have many loves.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Love is never easy. We begin by loving the things we can, according to our stature, but it is not long before we find that what we love is other than ourselves and that our love is no protection against being wounded. Do we then speak to dominate what we love, to make it bend to our will, to stop it from hurting us even though to do so is to betray love? And that is only where the difficulty begins..”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Many forgotten things live still in children's tales.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Not even I can see all ends, but I have been in this world long enough to know that a choice is not choice and breeds slow ills, even were it done for the highest reasons.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle



“I think you are a liar because you think you know what is true. You think you feel what is true. But you do not yet know what you do feel and what you do know. Your desire and do not take; you love and are too afraid to feel your love; you conceal your vanity and pettiness from yourself; you are afraid to look into your soul and see what you are. That iis why i think you are a liar.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“It is far better to put away fear than to be driven by it.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, is that it makes me forget all about being seasick.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“To love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Elednor,' he said, 'Elednor, why have you betrayed me? Come back to me. Come back to were you belong. I alone need you...”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle



“You are the Fire Lily", said the Winterking softly. "And I am the Ice King. Does fire melt ice? Or ice melt fire? Or may they come together, fire and ice, neither melted nor quenched?”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“You said that love could not be feigned and could not be stolen" she said passionately. "And now you say I am to be your queen. And yet you imprison me and give me no freedom. You know what it is like to be caged, It is a death. You tell me I cannot hide from you and yet you punish me for hiding.You say you do not want me to fear you and you treat me like I am a slave. Forgive me my Lord"-and here she bowed her head sadly, contrite and meek-"I don not understand why you are punishing me for something you say I cannot do. I do not understand your love, if this is the love you offer me.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“There is a great force in renunciation of power that those who are blinded by the lust for domination cannot understand because those who truly love do not desire power.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Cadvan smiled. “We are all many,” he said. “But most of us don’t have the privilege of understanding that as clearly as you do. It is hard to know oneself, but until we do, we cannot know why we act as we do. It’s a lifetime’s quest, and it never ends.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“The weather was clear and still, and the countless stars opened above them, seeming like brilliant cold fruits that Maerad could simply pick out of the sky.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle



“But all these truths, woven together, might give us a picture of what is true. That is why it’s important to know all the different stories. We can never see all the sky at once.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“All the fears and doubts surrounding her grief and regrets were swept up into the tempest of the music, poising here in the centre of the moment, a clear vessel of joy.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Life is hard, no? And full of sorrow. The Pilani dance in defiance of death and grief and hardship. They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than to gutter out like a dim flame.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than gutter out like a dim flame.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle


“Maerad, our world is full of sorrow and evil,” he said. “But there is also beauty and light and love. You must remember that.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Riddle



About the author

Alison Croggon
Born place: in Transvaal, South Africa
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“If you expect the worse, you're only denying someone a chance to be better”
― Sangu Mandanna, quote from The Lost Girl


“More wine helps; it takes the edge off the despair.”
― Garth Stein, quote from A Sudden Light


“You must be careful, Harper. You're stubborn, hardheaded, scientific practicalist, and all of this seems like a nightmare to you that you hope will simply evaporate when you wake up. But you don't wake up from this.”
― Kat Richardson, quote from Greywalker


“The bear, I decided, had got to become mine. The dogs and my other animals would soon get used to it and together we could go waltzing over the hillsides.”
― Gerald Durrell, quote from Birds, Beasts and Relatives


“Zues?" I said.
"His computer. He named it." Then she whispered conspiratorially, "He acts like it's a person."
"I do not," he said as we walked down the hall toward his room.
"You gave it a birthday party," she said.
Grayson stopped walking for a moment. "Annual hard-drive maintenance and software upgrades do not count as a birthday party."
"No," she said. "But singing 'Happy Birthday' to it does."
He took a deep breath. They've obviously been through this before. "You know I was testing the new voice-recognition software."
Natalie looked at me. "Birthday party.”
― James Ponti, quote from Dead City


Interesting books

The Alchemyst
(120.5K)
The Alchemyst
by Michael Scott
The Dead Zone
(145.7K)
The Dead Zone
by Stephen King
Quo Vadis
(21.8K)
Quo Vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Just So Stories
(40.5K)
Just So Stories
by Rudyard Kipling
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(71.9K)
The Tenant of Wildfe...
by Anne Brontë
Naked in Death
(137.4K)
Naked in Death
by J.D. Robb

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.