Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

Biography

Type: Writer

Born: June 6, 1973

Died:

Patrick James Rothfuss is an American writer of epic fantasy. He is best known for his projected three-volume series "The Kingkiller Chronicle".

Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket.
But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

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.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.

I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.

Never quenched. Though I am doused in you, I burn.

It exhasperated her, but she knew better than to force the world to her desire.

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.

The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.

But no. There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.

There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth."

Vashet smiled lazily. "And if the pursuit of the truth was my goal, that would concern me." She gave a long yawn, stretching like a happy cat. "Instead I will focus on the joy in my heart, [...}

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

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.

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

Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.

It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.

I was one of those. I meddled with dark powers. I
summoned demons. I ate the entire little cheese, including the rind.

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!

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

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.

Just handle the books gently and you’ll get along fine.

There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.

Eavesdropping is a deplorable habit, but I have developed worse ones since.

There is a great difference between a gift given freely, and one that's meant to tie you to a man.

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.

I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.

There's looking and there's looking. When some men look at you it's a greasy thing. It makes you want to have a bath. With other men it's nice. It helps you know you're beautiful.

She took another step. The simple motion of her moving leg was like a dance, the unexaggerated shifting of her hip entrancing as a fire. The arch of her bare foot said more of sex than anything I'd seen in my young life.

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?

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.

No hard feelings about that time in the Crucible when you mixed my salts and I was nearly blind for a day. No. No, really, drink up!

Metal rusts, music lasts forever.

«Siempre he preferido las noches sin luna. A oscuras es más fácil hablar. Es más fácil ser uno mismo»
- Denna.

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.

She smiled like knife on a velvet, she stretched like cat on the sun.

She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums.

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.

It felt exactly like someone had hit me in the head with a church.

I heard the silence pouring from them. The audience held themselves quiet, tense, and tight, as if the song had burned them worse than flame.

Each person held their wounded selves closely, clutching their pain as if it were a precious thing.

What what," Trapis said as he hurried over to tend to her, his bare feet slapping on the floor. "What what. Hush hush.

If you fall, you fall," Elodin shrugged. "Sometimes falling teaches us things too." In dreams you often fall before you wake.

The point isn't to win the game. The point is to play a beautiful game. (paraphrased)

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.

Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician's curse.

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

Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.

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.

He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.

Music explains itself...It is the road and it is the map that shows the road. It is both together.

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.

Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food.

If power is the only important thing, then Frodo loses against Sauron. Hell, if power’s the only important thing then Gandalf loses against Sauron. If magic is the deciding factor of a fight, then four plucky kids from England get their asses turned to stone by the White Which.

Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous".

Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

... for most practical purposes, Tarbean had two parts: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians and courtesans.

His voice is like a thunderstorm, and his hands know every secret hidden deep beneath the cool, dark earth.

Sabes que eres listo. Ese es tu punto débil. Das por hecho que sabes dónde te metes, pero no lo sabes.

Share Page

Patrick Rothfuss Wiki

Patrick Rothfuss At Amazon