The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

by Patrick Rothfuss

“Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?”

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.

“You have a stone in your heart, and some days it’s so heavy there is nothing to be done.

Because while your mouths might speak the same language, your hearts do not.” He looked at me intently. “This is an issue of translation.”

“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.”

You might think these thousand facts gave me some insight into the Fae. That I somehow fit them together like puzzle pieces and discovered the true shape of things. A thousand facts is quite a lot, after all…. But no. A thousand seems like a lot, but there are more stars than that in the sky, and they make neither a map nor a mural.

“That’s the price you pay for civilization though.” “What price?” I asked. “Arrogance,” the Cthaeh said. “You assume you know everything. You laughed at faeries until you saw one.

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.”