Patrick Rothfuss Quotes - Page 2

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.
Patrick Rothfuss
My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day.
Patrick Rothfuss
Pride and folly, they go together like two tightly grasping hands.
Patrick Rothfuss
Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason.
Patrick Rothfuss
This is how deeply rooted stories are, folks. We crave them before we can walk, and we start telling them before we can talk.
Patrick Rothfuss
Think of all the stories you've heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed he sets out for vengeance. What next?"Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. "He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of thing."Kvothe nodded. "Exactly! He finds the mad hermit in the woods, proves himself worthy, and learns the names of all things, just like Taborlin the Great. Then with these powerful magics at his beck and call, what does he do?"Chronicler shrugged. "He finds the villains and kills them." "Of course," Kvothe said grandly. "Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.
Patrick Rothfuss
I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.
Patrick Rothfuss
Are you hurt?""Absolutely," I said. "Especially in my everywhere.
Patrick Rothfuss
If I ever met someone without a single shadow on their heart, it was surely a child too young for speaking.
Patrick Rothfuss
Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.
Patrick Rothfuss
The point isn't to win the game. The point is to play a beautiful game. (paraphrased)
Patrick Rothfuss
She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.
Patrick Rothfuss
I would never normally approach a woman in this way, but I couldn't help but notice that you have the eyes of a lady I was once desperately in love with. ""What a shame to love only once," she said, showing her white teeth in a wicked smile. "I've heard some men can manage twice or even more."I ignored her gibe. "I am only a fool once. Never will I love again.
Patrick Rothfuss
It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
Patrick Rothfuss
The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
Patrick Rothfuss
Sharing silence between us. Sometimes is all you can share.
Patrick Rothfuss
It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
Patrick Rothfuss
Lies are simpler, and most of the time they make better sense.
Patrick Rothfuss
So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin?
Patrick Rothfuss
If she was beautiful at rest she was doubly so awake. Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself.
Patrick Rothfuss
Dawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
Patrick Rothfuss
Why, Reshi?"The words poured out of Bast in a sudden gush. "Why did you stay there when it was so awful?"Kvothe nodded to himself, as if he had been expecting the question. "Where else was there for me to go, Bast? Everyone I knew was dead.""Not everyone," Bast insisted. "There was Abenthy. You could have gone to him.""Hallowfell was hundreds of miles away, Bast," Kvothe said wearily as he wandered to the other side of the room and moved behind the bar. Hundreds of miles without my father's maps to guide me. Hundredsof miles without wagons to ride or sleep in. Without help of any sort, or money, or shoes. Not an impossible journey, I suppose. But for a young child, still numb with the shock of losing his parents. . . ."Kvothe shook his head. "No. In Tarbean at least I could beg or steal. I'd managed to survive in the forest for a summer, barely. But over the winter?" He shook his head. "I would have starved or frozen todeath."Standing at the bar, Kvothe filled his mug and began to add pinches of spice from several small containers, then walked toward the great stone fireplace, a thoughtful expression on his face. "You're right, of course. Anywhere would have been better than Tarbean."He shrugged, facing the fire. "But we are all creatures of habit. It is far too easy to stay in the familiar ruts we dig for ourselves. Perhaps I even viewed it as fair. My punishment for not being there to help when the Chandrian came. My punishment for not dying when I should have, with the rest of my family."Bast opened his mouth, then closed it and looked down at the tabletop, frowning.Kvothe looked over his shoulder and gave a gentle smile. "I'm not saying it's rational, Bast. Emotions by their very nature are not reasonable things. I don't feel that way now, but back then I did. I remember."He turned back to the fire. "Ben's training has given me a memory so clean and sharp I have to be careful not to cut myself sometimes."Kvothe took a mulling stone from the fire and dropped it into his wooden mug. It sank with a sharp hiss.The smell of searing clove and nutmeg filled the room.Kvothe stirred his cider with a long-handled spoon as he made his way back to the table. "You must also remember that I was not in my right mind. Much of me was still in shock, sleeping if you will. I needed something, or someone, to wake me up."He nodded to Chronicler, who casually shook his writing hand to loosen it, then unstoppered his inkwell.Kvothe leaned back in his seat. "I needed to be reminded of things I had forgotten. I needed a reason to leave. It was years before I met someone who could do those things." He smiled at Chronicler. "Before I met Skarpi.
Patrick Rothfuss
If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today. I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well
Patrick Rothfuss
I love her more than just a little. I think it's because we're both somewhat broken, in our own odd ways. More importantly, we're both aware of it.
Patrick Rothfuss
It was the sort of anger that comes to a slow boil inside the hearts of good men who want justice, and finding it out oftheir grasp, decide vengeance is the next best thing.
Patrick Rothfuss
She stamped her foot. She hoped the greedy thing shit for a week. She hoped it shit its awful self insideout and backward, then fell into a crack and lost it's name and died alone and hollow-empty in the angry dark.
Patrick Rothfuss
The gesture was so tight with rage she feared she’d snap and crack the world in two.
Patrick Rothfuss
They fight like puppies. They are young, and boys. They are full of anger and impatience. Women have less trouble with these things. It's part of what makes us better fighters.
Patrick Rothfuss
I don't care whose son he is. I won't go belly-up like a timid pup. If he's fool enough to take a poke at me, I'll snap the finger clean off that does the poking.
Patrick Rothfuss
He beat you." And as I spoke the words I felt a terrible anger come together inside me. It wasn't hot and furious, as some of my flashes of temper tend to be. This was different, slow and cold.
Patrick Rothfuss
Some days simply lay on you like stones.
Patrick Rothfuss
Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry.
Patrick Rothfuss
She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important.
Patrick Rothfuss
She knew the way of things. She knew ifyou weren't always stepping lightly as a bird the wholeworld came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards.Like a bottle against stones. Like a wrist pinned hardbeneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want andwine. . . .
Patrick Rothfuss
I want to hear you wound my lovely language with your rough barbarian tongue.
Patrick Rothfuss
Maple. MaypoleCatch and carry.Ash and Ember.Elderberry.Woolen. Woman.Moon at night.Willow. Window.Candlelight.Fallow farrow.Ash and oak.Bide and borrow.Chimney smoke.Barrel. Barley.Stone and stave.Wind and water.Misbehave.Maple. MaypoleCatch and carry.Ash and Ember.Elderberry.Woolen. Woman.Moon at night.Willow. Window.Candlelight.Fallow farrow.Ash and oak.Bide and borrow.Chimney smoke.Barrel. Barley.Stone and stave.Wind and water.Misbehave.
Patrick Rothfuss
Congratulations, he said. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. "Ever.
Patrick Rothfuss
Answers were always important, but they were seldom easy.
Patrick Rothfuss
This is the nature of love." Vashet said. "To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. This is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to paper all complete, the others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done.
Patrick Rothfuss
He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.
Patrick Rothfuss
I realize that I cannot say enough. So. Since I cannot say enough, at least I will avoid saying to much".
Patrick Rothfuss
...If there's one thing I'm well versed in it's my own good qualities.
Patrick Rothfuss
There's no clear water from a muddy well. All you can do is let the silt settle until the water clears otherwise it will taste sour. (paraphrased)
Patrick Rothfuss
I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.
Patrick Rothfuss
No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.
Patrick Rothfuss
She didn't know any better. Nobody had ever told her that she couldn't. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free.
Patrick Rothfuss
The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other.
Patrick Rothfuss
It had felt as if I were truly awake for the first time, true knowledge running like ice in my blood.The memory exhilirated me for a moment, then left me with a broken cord of loss.
Patrick Rothfuss
The wild women in his lap,' my father enthused, 'laying their breasts on his head.'There was a moment of stunned silence. Then my mother spoke slowly, with an edge to her voice. 'I think you mean "wild beasts laying their heads in his lap".''Do I?
Patrick Rothfuss
There is a great difference between a gift given freely, and one that's meant to tie you to a man.
Patrick Rothfuss
I am sorry to tell you this thing. Youu are a good man, and a pretty thing. But still, you are only a man. All you have to offer the world is your anger.
Patrick Rothfuss
His voice is like a thunderstorm, and his hands know every secret hidden deep beneath the cool, dark earth.
Patrick Rothfuss
They were the best sort of friends. The sort everyone hopes for but no one deserves, least of all me.
Patrick Rothfuss
After an awkward pause, Bast extended his hand. Chronicler hesitated for a bare moment before reaching out quickly, as if he were sticking his hand into a fire. Nothing happened, both of them seemed moderately surprised."Amazing, isn't it?" Kvothe addressed them bitingly. "Five fingers and flesh with blood beneath. One could almost believe that on the other end of that hand lay a person of some sort.
Patrick Rothfuss
It’s like this: if you have one piece of cake, and you eat it, that’s fine.If you have two pieces of cake, you should probably share some with a friend. But maybe not. Occasionally we could all use two pieces of cake.But if you have a whole cake, and you eat *all* of it, that’s not very cool. It’s not just selfish, it’s kinda sick and unhealthy.
Patrick Rothfuss
Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.
Patrick Rothfuss
Kvothe looked at Bast for a long moment. “Oh Bast,” he said softly to his student. His smile was gentle and sad. “I know what sort of story I’m telling. This is no comedy.”“This is the end of the story, Bast. We all know that.” Kvothe’s voice was matter-of-fact, as casual as if he were describing yesterday’s weather. “I have led an interesting life, and this reminiscence has a certain sweetness to it. But . . .”Kvothe drew a deep breath and let it out gently. “. . . but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It’s not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No.We all know what kind of story this is.
Patrick Rothfuss
I slept and I woke. She gave me a ring made from a leaf, a cluster of golden berries, a flower that opened and closed at the stroking of a finger....And once, when I startled awake with my face wet and my chest aching, she reached out to lay her hand on top of mine. The gesture was so tentative, her expression so anxious, you would think she had never touched a man before. As if she was worried I might break or burn or bite. Her cool hand lay on mine for a moment, gentle as a moth. She squeezed my hand softly, waited, then pulled away.It struck me as odd at the time. But I was too clouded with confusion and grief to think clearly. Only now, looking back, do I realize the truth of things. With all the awkwardness of a young lover, she was trying to comfort me, and she didn't have the slightest idea how.
Patrick Rothfuss
It's a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving her alone. Good thing she's used to it by now, isn't it? Otherwise you might have hurt her. Otherwise you just might have broken that poor girl's heart
Patrick Rothfuss
What? No defense? Any student of mine must be able to defend his ideas against an attack. No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp!
Patrick Rothfuss