Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

Practice makes the master.

When someone tells you a piece of their life, they're giving you a gift, not granting you your due.

Thieves, Heretics, and Whores

Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.

I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad.

I smiled,"Deoch, my heart is made of stronger stuff than glass. When she strikes she'll find it strong as iron-bound brass, or gold and adamant together mixed. Don't think I am unaware, some startled deer to stand transfixed by hunter's horns. It's she who should take care, for when she strikes, my heart will make a sound so beautiful and bright that it can't help but bring her back to me in winged light.

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.

I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.

...nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.

Close your mouth, E'lir Kvothe, or I will feel obliged to put some vile tonic in it.

I was pretty poor for a long time. Not *poor* poor. But college student poor. I lived for most of my adult life living on student wages, then after I got my MA and started teaching, I lived on teacher's wages, which isn't much better.

I decided to dub the room with the good chairs my lutery. Or perhaps my performatory. I would need a while to come up with something suitably pretentious.

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.

It might not be true, but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?

I'm honestly not a big fan of pitching things. I'm a firm believer of letting the product speak for iteself.

What do they do to students at the University who eavesdrop?” Bast asked curiously. “I haven’t the slightest idea. I was never caught. I think making you sit and listen to the rest of my story should be punishment enough.

I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket," Wil said. "And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake.

In brief, worldbuilding is different than setting in my opinion. Setting is a room. A backdrop. It's scenery. But without good worldbuilding, you can't have realistic feeling scenery. You can't have cool, unique backdrops for your story.

The thing that helps me do a good job is that I don't feel the need to explain everything about the world to my reader. I'm not writing a history text on the Four Corners. I'm telling a story that's set there. The setting belongs in the background for the most part, and it's easy for fantasy authors to forget that. That's one of the unfortunate parts of Tolkien's legacy, in my opinion. Read the first hundred pages of the Fellowship of the Ring and you start to get pissed, "Shut up about the Shire's museums! Isn't the world supposed to be in peril or something?"

I guess I'm destined to be loveless

We try to spread the word about the charity by doing fun little stunts to catch people's attention. Like when Hank Green did a music video for us.

All stories are true," Skarpi said. "But this one really happened, if that's what you mean.

Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna.

Reading is professionally important for me to keep tuned in to what's being written in my genre, let's not lie. But that's not the reason I read. I read for my own emotional and mental health. If I stopped reading, I'd probably just die.

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.

Now the truth is, writing is a great way to deal with a lot of difficult emotional issues. It can be very therapeutic, but that's best done in your journal, or on your blog if you're an exhibitionist. Trying to put a bunch of *specific* stuff from your personal life into your story usually just isn't appropriate unless you're writing a memoir or a personal essay or something of the sort.

Just because I tread heavily on propriety's toes doesn't mean I can't play the game when it's of use to me.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.

I have heard what poets write about women. They rhyme and rhapsodize and lie. I have watched sailors on the shore stare mutely at the slow-rolling swell of the sea. I have watched old soldiers with hearts like leather grow teary-eyed at their king's colors stretched against the wind. Listen to me: these men know nothing of love. You will not find it in the words of poets or the longing eyes of sailors. If you want to know of love, look to a trouper's hands as he makes his music. A trouper knows.

Also, worldbuilding touches all aspects of your story. It touches plot and character as well. If you don't know the culture your character comes from, how can you know what he's really like? You must know your characters on a much deeper level than you would if you just shrugged your way into a cookie cutter fantasy world.

I’d heard you were dead.” "I heard you wear a red lace corset,” I said matter-of-factly. “But I don’t believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.

There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and know the same women.

When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.

That's all that really matters in the end. Stories.

The cost of a loaf is a simple thing, and so a loaf is often sought, but some things are past valuing: laughter, land, and love are never bought.

Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur Long-long in ledger all hope forgotten Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding Breathless her breast her high blood rising To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty.

Half a King is my favorite book by Joe Abercrombie so far, and that's saying something.

Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.

My favourite member of the Beatles is Lennon. He might have been crazy. But he's my kind of crazy.

Writing from a teen's perspective is easy as pie. At least I've actually been a teen. I've never been a woman, or an ethnic minority, or a weary old man. If anything, writing from the perspective of a child is probably easier for me. When I was a kid everyone thought I was so clever and precocious. Now that I'm adult, everyone thinks that I'm kinda odd and childish.

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think.

If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky.

There is a difference between something being essential, and it being necessary. If you take your favorite book and strip it down to what is merely essential to tell the story, it would be butchery. The end result would horrify you. Essential is the bones of the story, but the soul lives somewhere else.

When left to its own devices it tends to make me look as if I’ve been set afire.

Some of my Arcanum bunkmates taught me a card game called dogs-breath. I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games.