Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

A woman who goes around wearing a knife is obviously looking for trouble." She reached deep into her pocket and brought out a long, slender piece of metal, glittering all along one edge. "However a woman who carries a knife is ready for trouble. Generally speaking, it's easier to appear harmless. It's less trouble all around.
Patrick Rothfuss
Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn’t be.
Patrick Rothfuss
They were everything they ought to be and nothing else.
Patrick Rothfuss
Yesterday he had limped, but today there was no part of his feet that didn't hurt, so limping did no good.
Patrick Rothfuss
One wife, you're happy, two and you're tired, three and they'll hate each other, four and they'll hate you.
Patrick Rothfuss
You're sure your new roommate won't be like the last one who wore tinfoil socks and had a tendency to occasionally urinate in the refrigerator. You're sure you'll pass Math 106 this time around. You're determined to actually join some clubs this year and not just sit around in your dorm eating spray cheese from a can and watching youtube videos about cats.
Patrick Rothfuss
I can't give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.
Patrick Rothfuss
I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.
Patrick Rothfuss
When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.
Patrick Rothfuss
Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?
Patrick Rothfuss
Wrong things never lead to success. If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the Lethani there is no true success.
Patrick Rothfuss
Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart's yearning.
Patrick Rothfuss
A poet is a musician that can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.
Patrick Rothfuss
So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it.
Patrick Rothfuss
What is word for good together living? Nobody shits in the well?"I laughed. "Civilization?"He nodded, splaying his fingers: amusement. "Yes," he said. "Speaking with hands is civilization.""But smiling is natural," I protested. "Everyone smiles.""Natural is not civilization," Tempi said. "Cooking meat is civilization. Washing off stink is civilization.""So in Ademre you always smile with hands?" I wished I knew the gesture for dismay."No. Smiling with face good with family. Good with some friend.""Why only family?"Tempi repeated his thumb-on-collarbone gesture again. "When you make this." He pressed his palm to the side of his face and blew air into it, making a great flatulent noise. "That is natural, but you do not make it near others. Rude. With family..." He shrugged. Amusement. "...civilization not important. More natural with family.
Patrick Rothfuss
Why wasn't I already kissing this woman? Why wasn't I naked, eating violets, and playing music underneath the open sky?Looking around the room again, everything seemed terribly ridiculous. These people sitting on their benches wearing layers on layers of clothing, eating with knives and forks. It all struck me as so pointless and contrived. It was incredibly funny. It was like they were playing a game and didn't even realize it. It was like a joke I'd never understood before.
Patrick Rothfuss
It's hard to be wrongfully accused, but it's worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.
Patrick Rothfuss
Do you know why they call this place the Rookery?" Elodin asked. I shook my head."Because it's where you go if you're a-ravin'." He smiled a wild smile. He laughed a terrible laugh.
Patrick Rothfuss
My alar is like the ocean in storm. (Devi)
Patrick Rothfuss
...every piece of the laughing was a tiny bird come tumbling out to fly around the room.
Patrick Rothfuss
Wilem: 'What is the word for that here? A man who is intimate with both women and men?''Lucky?' Denna suggested. 'Tired? Ambidextrous?''Ambisextrous,' I corrected.
Patrick Rothfuss
I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.
Patrick Rothfuss
But laugh?" He pressed the flat of his hand against my stomach. "Here lives laugh." He ran his finger straight up to my mouth and spread his fingers. "Push back laugh is not good. Not healthy.""Also cry?" I asked. I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek with one finger."Also cry." He put his hand on his own belly. "Ha ha ha," he said, pressing his hand to show me the motion of his stomach. Then his expression changed to sad. "Huh huh huh," he heaved with exaggerated sobs, pressing his stomach again. "Same place. Not healthy to push down.
Patrick Rothfuss
I will break your heart over a fucking library card.
Patrick Rothfuss
As my father used to say: “There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.” - Kvothe the Bloodless (The Name of The Wind)
Patrick Rothfuss
Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself
Patrick Rothfuss
Bast looked at him incredulously."The whole world is burning down,"he said."Open your eyes.
Patrick Rothfuss
And there was Ambrose. To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavours of our relationship. It was more like the two of us entered into a business partnership in order to more efficiently pursue our mutual interest of hating each other.
Patrick Rothfuss
My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I'm paying for it.
Patrick Rothfuss
money I could hardly think of it. “Go on, take it.
Patrick Rothfuss
over his own dark Cealdish beard. “Nothing like your marvelous facebear,
Patrick Rothfuss
Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu’s angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn’t stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.
Patrick Rothfuss
He hesitated, then lifted his head and sniffed. “Have you been drinking?” The question was more curious than accusatory. “No,” Bast said. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been tasting,” Bast said, emphasizing the word. “Tasting comes before drinking.
Patrick Rothfuss
I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.
Patrick Rothfuss
What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.” “It is a sprung rhythm,” he said, his voice stiff and offended. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Sprung?” I burst out with an incredulous laugh. “I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.
Patrick Rothfuss
Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.
Patrick Rothfuss
All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.
Patrick Rothfuss
I wish I felt as calm as I look
Patrick Rothfuss
There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.
Patrick Rothfuss
It's quite enough to have a secret. Anything more would be greedy.
Patrick Rothfuss
In a later chapter, less argued over and less well-known, Teccam explains that there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart. Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. These secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free. Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.
Patrick Rothfuss
She washed he hands,then looked at my side. "you haven't even had it stitched?" She said incredulously."I've been rather busy," I said. "With the running like hell and hiding all night.
Patrick Rothfuss
I do this so you cannot help but hear. a wise man views a moonless night with fear.
Patrick Rothfuss
I was in my early twenties and I was, to be quite honest, a bit of a punk. A swaggering entitled straight white guy who hadn't but a lot of thought into what it might be like to be anything other than a straight white guy. Because when you're a straight white guy, you don't *have* to think about that....
Patrick Rothfuss
If you are eager to find the reason I became the Kvothe they tell stories about, you could look there, I suppose."Chronicler's forehead wrinkled. "What do you mean, exactly?"Kvothe paused for a long moment, looking down at his hands. "Do you know how many times I've been beaten over the course of my life?"Chronicler shook his head.Looking up, Kvothe grinned and tossed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "Neither do I. You'd think that sort of thing would stick in a person's mind. You'd think I would remember how many bones I've had broken. You'd think I'd remember the stitches and bandages." He shook his head. "I don't. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years."Chronicler frowned. "You said yourself that there was nothing you could have done.""I could have," Kvothe said seriously, "and I didn't. I made my choice and I regret it to this day. Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.
Patrick Rothfuss
There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.
Patrick Rothfuss
A tree doesn't make a thunderstorm, but any fool knows where lighting´s going to strike".
Patrick Rothfuss
Kvothe continued, smiling himself “I see you laugh. Very well, for simplicity’s sake, let us assume I am the center of creation. In doing this, let us pass over innumerable boring stories: the rise and fall of empires, sagas of heroism, ballads of tragic love. Let us hurry forward to the only tale of any real importance.” His smile broadened. “Mine.
Patrick Rothfuss
But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world. Even though she knew it was a wicked thing to do.
Patrick Rothfuss
She shelled the nuts and toasted them, jiggling them about in the pan. She sprinkled them with salt and ate them each by each. Some were bitter. Some were sweet. Some were hardly anything. That was just the way of things.
Patrick Rothfuss
Patience and propriety. It was the only graceful thing to do.
Patrick Rothfuss
Oh yes. It was well worth it, doing things the proper way.
Patrick Rothfuss
She was not vain enough to work her will against the world. But she could use the things the world had given her.
Patrick Rothfuss
The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our chilhood behind.
Patrick Rothfuss
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
Patrick Rothfuss
When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.
Patrick Rothfuss
But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world.
Patrick Rothfuss
Losing Foxen was bad. It would leave her blind and lonely in the dark. Being trapped beneath the pipes and choking out her life was awful too. But neither of those things were wrong.
Patrick Rothfuss
You are unmannerly,sharp-tounged, and show no respect for your betters,which is practically everyone given your lowly ravel birth.""I am Edema Ruh to my bones.That means my blood is red.It means I breathe the free air and walk where my feet take me.I do not cringe and fawn like a dog at a man's title.That looks like pride to people who have spent their lives cultivating supple spines"-Kvothe
Patrick Rothfuss
Pride is the luxury of the strong".
Patrick Rothfuss