Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

Are you hurt?" "Absolutely," I said. "Especially in my everywhere.

Character is half the reason we read. We're excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.

It's not prowess if you watch 5 hours of TV a day. It's just how you choose to spend your time.

The Chancellor looked down at the empty table for a minute. Then he shrugged, looked up, and gave a surprisingly jaunty smile. "All in favor of admitting first-term Kvothe's reckless use of sympathy as proof of mastery of basic principles of sympathy vote by show of hands.

We need to read good books, and for that to happen, we need to share good books.

The desire for knowledge shapes a man.

85% of modern music doesn't have a damn thing to do with music. It has to do with looking good. Name me one woman on the top ten right now who isn't absolutely smoking hot. You think that's a coincidence?

Metal rusts, music lasts forever.

If you open the door and realize things like the fact that Batman is occupying the same narrative space that Robin Hood used to fill 400 years ago, then you have the freedom to ignore the pointless "what is literature" discussion and just talk about stories.

I can't give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.

You,” I said, “are sweet music in a distant room.

When you read a fantasy novel part of the fun is getting to explore a new world. Everyone knows that. But I believe the same is true about characters. You can explore interesting people in the same way that you explore a town or a culture.

My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I'm paying for it.

Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment.

It was more exciting when I didn't know I had permission.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way

Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.

Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.

I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance.

Feel free to call me by my first name: Master.

Humor is hard, hard, hard. And if you fail with humor, you don't fail halfway. You drop the ball humor-wise and everyone notices.

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.

I learned to love the feel of good words.

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

I knelt and opened up my lute case. Moving the lute aside, I pressed the lid of the secret compartment and twisted it open. I slid Threpe's sealed letter inside, where it joined the hollow horn with Nina's drawing and a small sack of dried apple I had stowed there. There was nothing special about the dried apple, but in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.

Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness. That is why owls make poor heroes.

In the hours that followed, I learned that Ademic hand gestures did not actually represent facial expressions. It was nothing so simple as that. For example a smile can mean you're amused, happy, grateful, or satisfied. You can smile to comfort someone. You can smile because you're content or because you're in love. A grimace or a grin look similar to a smile, but they mean entirely different things. Imagine trying to teach someone how to smile. Imagine trying to describe what different smiles mean and when, precisely, to use them in conversation. It's harder than learning to walk.

Fencing is more a sport than a martial art. It would be like basing your knowledge of roman phalanx warfare on NFL football.

I don't speak fluent bumpkin.

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.

What were you thinking?" Bast said with an odd mixture of confusion and concern. Coat was a long while in answering. "I tend to think too much Bast. My greatest successes tended to come when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right, even if there was no explantion for what I did.

I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.

There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

My only real daydreamy casting over the years has been Natalie Portman for Denna. She's an amazing actress, and Denna is going to be one of the hardest characters to pull off.

I have no balance. My life is a hot mess.

I will say the most raw joy I've experienced reading has probably come from the times I've been reading with my little boys.

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.

The framed tale is, in my opinion, one of the most natural ways to tell a story. If you think of it, the conceit of the frame-less story is actually the odd way of doing things. Without the frame, how do you know the context for a story?

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.

You still think I've gone cracked in the head," Ben said, amused. "Listen, if tomorrow we pulled into Biren and someone told you there were shamble-men in the woods, would you believe them?" My father shook his head. "What if two people told you?" Another shake. Ben leaned forward on his stump. "What if a dozen people told you, with perfect earnestness, that shamble-men were out in the fields, eating-" "Of course I wouldn't believe them," my father said, irritated. "It's ridiculous." "Of course it is," Ben agreed, raising a finger. "But the real question is this: Would you go into the woods?

You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.

Only priests and fools are fearless and I've never been on the best of terms with God.

...hear rumors and go digging for the painful truth beneath the lovely lies. You believe you have a right to these things, but you don't. When someone tells you a piece of their life, they're giving you a gift, not granting you your due.

Is there a connection between language and magic? Yes. Ten times yes. So much yes that it almost doesn't bear talking about. It's as pointless that arguing that the sun is hot.

Chronicler picked up his pen, but before he could dip it, Kvothe held up a hand. "Let me say one thing before I start. I've told stories in the past, painted pictures with words, told hard lies and harder truths. Once, I sang colors to a blind man. Seven hours I played, but at the end he said he saw them, green and red and gold. That, I think, was easier than this. Trying to make you understand her with nothing more than words. You have never seen her, never heard her voice. You cannot know.

Still, these days when I daydream about the movie, I don't think about the big picture. It's more fun for me to think of little things that would add to the movie. I like to think the powers that be would let me amuse myself with some small things in order to shut me up while they re-write the screenplay to turn Kvothe into a lesbian, shape-changing unicorn.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.