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

by Patrick Rothfuss

The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right.

“See a man without a face? Move like ghosts from place to place. What’s their plan? What’s their plan? Chandrian. Chandrian.”

“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.”

“Kvothe, Defend yourself well at the University. Make me proud. Remember your father’s song. Be wary of folly.

I hope they spent those last few hours well. I hope they didn’t waste them on mindless tasks: kindling the evening fire and cutting vegetables for dinner. I hope they sang together, as they so often did. I hope they retired to our wagon and spent time in each other’s arms. I hope they lay near each other afterward and spoke softly of small things. I hope they were together, busy with loving each other, until the end came.

Careful Cinder, his teeth may be sharp.”

“Someone’s parents,” he said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us.

The saying “time heals all wounds” is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Tehlu asked them three times

Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe? From all that would harm you in the world?

Plainly said, he was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn’t realize that once a noose is tied, it will fit one neck as easily as another.

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!

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble so soon, sir.” I offered hesitantly. “Oh?” he said. His expression considerably less stern now that we were alone. “How long had you intended to wait?” “At least a span, sir.”

“I’m to be whipped and admitted to the Arcanum.” He looked at me curiously, trying to see if I was making a joke. “I’m sorry? Congratulations?” He made a shy smile at me. “Do I buy you a bandage or a beer?” I smiled back. “Both.”

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.

Simmon turned back to me, and spoke with remarkable candor. “It’s just that we’d like to see you more often than once every handful of days as you run from Mains to the Fishery. Girls are wonderful, I’ll admit, but when one takes one of my friends away, I get a little jealous.”

I buried my face in my hands and wept. Not for a broken lute string and the chance of failure. Not for blood shed and a wounded hand. I did not even cry for the boy who had learned to play a lute with six strings in the forest years ago. I cried for Sir Savien and Aloine, for love lost and found and lost again, at cruel fate and man’s folly. And so, for a while, I was lost in grief and knew nothing.

She disappeared back into the crowd, a wonderful collection of gently moving curves. “What was that shameful display?” Wilem demanded after she had gone. “What?” I asked. “What?” he mocked my tone. “Can you even pretend to be that thick? If a girl as fair as that looked at me with one eye the way she looked at you with two . . . We’d have a room by now, to say it carefully.”

“Isn’t that the way of the world?” she said. “We want the sweet things, but we need the unpleasant ones.”

IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.