Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)

by Brandon Sanderson

‘By my best guess, spren are elements of the Cognitive Realm that have leaked into the physical world. They’re concepts that have gained a fragment of sentience, perhaps because of human intervention.

Light makes shadow. Truth makes lies.

Instead, she and the others had ordered the murder of the Alethi king in a desperate gambit to stop the listener gods from returning. Well, that had worked – the Alethi king hadn’t been able to put his plan into action. But now, her people were slowly being destroyed as a result.

Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual,

Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will, she’d said. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.

He’s thinking these bandits could have easily been him and his men, Shallan thought, looking back down at Bluth, his dead face lit by fires. What separates the heroes from the villains? One speech in the night?

Well, it wasn’t an ordinary-shaped hill, so maybe that had something to do with the split. It was shaped more like a wide, flat pyramid with only three steps. A large base, a second plateau atop it that was perhaps a hundred feet across, then a third, smaller peak atop the other two, placed right in the center. Almost like a cake with three tiers that had been cut with a large knife right down the center.

This one, the soul of the storm, was the one the humans called Stormfather – and he was not one of her people’s gods. In fact, the songs named him a traitor – a spren who had chosen to protect humans instead of the listeners.

‘Well, he said that he’d needed, uh, I had this remembered for you. He said, “I needed an objective frame of reference by which to judge the experience of your company. Somewhere between four and five blows, I place it.” I don’t rightly understand what he meant, sir. I think he was mocking me.’

‘It’s not a lie,’ Shallan said, ‘if everyone understands and knows what it means.’ ‘Mm. Those are some of the best lies.’

‘To be human is to seek beauty, Shallan. Do not despair, do not end the hunt because thorns grow in your way.

This . . . this was what some people lived for. A day of honest labor, followed by an evening at the tavern with friends.

Shallan was barely listening. A Blade with the back edge ridged like flowing waves. Or perhaps tongues of fire. Etchings all along its surface. Curved, sinuous. She knew this Blade. It belonged to her brother Helaran.

‘All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.’

A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.

As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.”’

The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.’

a benevolent tyrant is preferable to the disaster of weak rule.

In taking the throne by force, we implied – no we screamed – that strength is the right of rule.

‘Then I shall allow it,’ Dalinar said. He liked anything having to do with duty.

Fighting was not about glory, but about men lying on the ground screaming and thrashing, tangled in their own viscera.

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

I guess what truly matters is just how well you’ve run.

‘Don’t dally,’ Dalinar said. ‘You remain here, and you’re a dead man.’ ‘Like Roion?’ Sebarial asked. ‘Unfortunately.’ ‘So it is true,’ Sebarial said, standing up, brushing off his trousers – which were somehow still dry. ‘Who am I going to make fun of now?’ He shook his head sadly.

We’ve won, yes, but now we have to survive with our victory.

‘So you acknowledge that my father was right,’ Adolin said. ‘That his visions are true. The Voidbringers have returned, and you are made a fool.’

‘Anyway, as this story is a comedy, the man is invited to the palace for a reward. Various nonsense follows, ending with the poor farmer wiping himself in the privy with one of the finest paintings ever painted, then strolling out to find all of the lighteyes staring at an empty frame and commenting on how beautiful the work is. Mirth and guffaws. Flourish and bow. Exit before anyone thinks too much about the tale.’

‘Expectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.

A man will find a single coin in the mud and talk about it for days, but when his inheritance comes and is accounted one percent less than he expected, then he will declare himself cheated.’