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Started reading
August 11, 2024
“What am I?” Szeth whispered, a bit of Light leaking from his lips as he looked past the man down the long hallway. “I’m … sorry.”
“I don’t know what I am either. A bridgeman? A surgeon? A soldier? A slave? Those are all just labels. Inside, I’m me. A very different me than I was a year ago, but I can’t worry about that, so I just keep moving and hope my feet take me where I need to go.”
“Expense?” Wit cut in. “Sadeas, I don’t believe you’ve ever paid me a sphere. Though no, please, don’t offer. I can’t take your money, as I know how many others you must pay to get what you wish of them.”
Wit shrugged. “I point out truths when I see them, Brightlord Sadeas. Each man has his place. Mine is to make insults. Yours is to be in-sluts.”
“Two what, Dalinar?” Wit said, eyes twinkling. “Eyes, hands, or spheres? I’d lend you one of the first, but—by definition—a man can only have one I, and if it is given away, who would be Wit then?
To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
“When reading these books, scholarship and ignorance feel much alike to me,” Shallan said. “Ignorance may reside in a man hiding from intelligence, but scholarship can seem ignorance hidden behind intelligence.”
“Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.”
Am I a monster or am I a hero? Did I just slaughter four men, or did I stop four murderers from walking the streets? Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her? Did I have a right to defend myself? Or was I just looking for an excuse to end lives?”
‘Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.’
if you must, you may call me Hoid.
“If I should die,” Dalinar said, “then I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.”
We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us.
We fight here because we understand. The end is the same. It is the path that separates men. When we taste that end, we will do so with our heads held high, eyes to the sun.”
“I will protect those who cannot protect themselves,” he whispered. The Second Ideal of the Knights Radiant.
‘Lopen,’ they’d say, ‘you only have one arm, but I see that you can glow. I think that you should kiss me now.’
“Why is one man born a king, and another a beggar?” Dalinar asked. “It is the way of the world.”
“But it is difficult to tell! You consume some things, and turn them into other things . . . Very curious things that you hide. They have value? But you leave them. Why?”
“That makes sense. Why hasn’t anyone else ever explained that to me?”
“I’ve never actually had someone’s tongue on me,”
soldier came running into camp after going to see the prostitutes. He was white in the face. His friends asked if he had found a good time. He said that he had not. They asked why. He said that when he’d asked how much the woman charged, she’d said one mark plus the tip. He told his friends that he hadn’t realized they were charging body parts now.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a woman, gancho,” Lopen said. “Some of my relatives are women.”
“The Voidbringers are here. Time is short.”
“I will protect even those I hate,” Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. “So long as it is right.”
“The Knights Radiant,” Kaladin said softly, “have returned.”
Two books waiting for this moment.
“You sent him to the sky to die, assassin,” Kaladin said, Stormlight puffing from his lips, “but the sky and the winds are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your life.”
Hello, a cheerful voice said in his mind. Would you like to destroy some evil today?
“Protect you? Storms, Dalinar, at this point I’m not certain a rockslide could kill you. No, it just makes the rest of us look bad when you accomplish what you do while practically unarmed!”
“Hello, Father,” Kaladin said.
“You sure?” Syl asked. “Maybe we could have that ardent draw you a picture. She seems like she’d be really eager.”
“Inappropriate?” Pattern said. “Such as … dividing by zero?”
“Oh!” Pattern said suddenly, bursting up from the bowl to hover in the air. “You were talking about mating! I’m to make sure you don’t accidentally mate, as mating is forbidden by human society until you have first performed appropriate rituals! Yes, yes. Mmmm. Dictates of custom require following certain patterns before you copulate. I’ve been studying this!”
“Very well, you two,” Pattern said. “No mating. NO MATING.”
“If someone insulted my biceps, I wouldn’t attack him,” Dalinar said. “I’d refer him to a physician, because obviously something is wrong with his eyes.”
“Well,” Dalinar said, wagging his bent knife. “We looked at this place here, this kingdom, and we realized, ‘Hey, all these people have stuff .’ And we figured … hey, maybe we should have that stuff. So we took it.”
What? He wasn’t going to drink the wine he’d washed the blood into. He wasn’t a barbarian.
my ‘freedom’ is that of a leaf. Dropped from the tree, I just blow on the wind and pretend I’m in charge of my destiny.”
At their head was Jasnah Kholin.
Rlain sipped his drink and wished Renarin were here; the quiet, lighteyed man usually made a point of speaking with Rlain.
just wait
“It’s feminine,” Drehy added. “Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.”
“Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is, you could say, extra manly.”
“Of course you have,” Odium said, turning and walking away. “She simply robbed you of that memory.
“You learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes.
It was gratifying to see how much one could accomplish in both politics and trade by liberally murdering the other fellow’s soldiers.
I believe there’s at least one god still worshipping me by accident.”
“Child, when they were but babes, I had already lived dozens of lifetimes. ‘Old’ is a word you use for worn shoes. I’m something else entirely.”
“I’m smart enough not to follow my own advice, thank you very much.”
“Every child eventually realizes that her father isn’t actually God.”
