Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)

by Brandon Sanderson

Sixty-two days, the glyphs read. Death follows.

We have a duty. We’ll do it well. Better than anyone expects. We’re Bridge Four.’

‘Ah, the optimism of youth,’

Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.’

Want what you need, embrace it, desire it and bring it to you.

Expectation wasn’t just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.

‘I ain’t grouchy,’ Teft snapped. ‘I just have a low threshold for stupidity.’

Their eyes followed that Blade as they’d follow a gorgeous woman taking off her glove.

He watched the poor animals killing one another, fixated on them with the intensity of a woman reading a powerful novel.

‘What has happened to us?’ Dalinar asked. ‘Where is our honor?’ ‘Honor is dead,’ a voice whispered from beside him.

‘But I’ll see what I can do. If this goes poorly, take care of my men.’

‘I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.’

They ignore the greater assumption – that a ‘place’ for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be – by nature – a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood.

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.

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

‘The sensation – it’s not sorrow, but something deeper – of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just . . . haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.’

‘At least,’ she said, reaching her hand over his shoulder and past his head, ‘take this.’ ‘Take what?’ ‘This,’ Shallan said. Then she summoned a Shardblade.

such as requiring people to take an intelligence test of his own devising before being allowed to breed.

He’d drafted a law requiring that all people of less than average intellect be required to commit suicide for the good of the city. It had seemed reasonable. He had considered they might resist, but thought that the brilliance of the argument would sway them.

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

No time for weakness.

‘Navani!’ Dalinar shouted, pulling his horse to a slippery stop across the tarp from her. ‘I need a miracle!’ ‘Working on it,’ she shouted back.

‘I will protect even those I hate,’ Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. ‘So long as it is right.’

‘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.’

‘And . . . um . . . you are intelligent and articulate?’ ‘You forgot the compliment.’ ‘But I just said—’ ‘Those were simple statements of fact.’ ‘You’re wonderful,’ he said. ‘Truly, Syl. You are.’ ‘Also a fact,’ she said, grinning.