The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

by 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.

“Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”

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.

A poet is a musician who 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.”

A clever, thoughtless person is one of the most terrifying things there is.

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 are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.

Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.

The closeness of her was the sweetest, sharpest thing my life had ever known.

“Rian, would you please cross your legs?” The request was made with such an earnest tone that not even a titter escaped the class. Looking puzzled, Rian crossed her legs. “Now that the gates of hell are closed,” Hemme said in his normal, rougher tones. “We can begin.”

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

“There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.”

“What can you do then, besides play so well that Tehlu and his angels would weep to hear?” “I imagine I could do anything,” I said easily. “If you would ask it of me.” She laughed.

‘One wife, you’re happy, two and you’re tired—” I nodded. “—three and they’ll hate each other—” “—four and they’ll hate you,”

We lay on our sides, like spoons nesting in a drawer. My arm ended up under her head, like a pillow. She curled snugly along the inside of my body, so easy and natural, as if she had been designed to fit there.

“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.”