More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 28 - August 19, 2017
“I’ve found that refusing to explain secrets to young people makes them more prone to get themselves into trouble, not less. Your experimentation proves that you’ve already stumbled face-first into all of this—as I once did myself, I’ll have you know. I know through painful experience how dangerous Shadesmar can be. If I leave you in ignorance, I’ll be to blame if you get yourself killed there.”
Laurie liked this
woman. “There is a secret you must learn, child,” Jasnah said. “A secret that is even more important than those relating to Shadesmar and spren. Power is an illusion of perception.” Shallan frowned. “Don’t mistake me,” Jasnah continued. “Some kinds of power are real—power to command armies, power to Soulcast. These come into play far less often than you would think. On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power—authority—exists only as it is perceived.
And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king. In that case, my authority is not a real thing. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion for them, as can you.” “I’m not convinced, Brightness.” “I know. If you were, you would be doing it already.” Jasnah stood up, brushing off her skirt. “You will tell me if you see that pattern—the one that appeared on the waves—again?” “Yes, Brightness,” Shallan said, distracted. “Then take the rest of the day for your art.
“Something is either right or it’s wrong,” Dalinar said, feeling stubborn. “The Almighty doesn’t come into it.”
He stopped. The wall of his room bore a series of stark white scratches forming glyphs. They hadn’t been there before. Sixty-two days, the glyphs read. Death follows.
The Everstorm comes. . . . Sixty-two days. Not enough time. It was, apparently, all he had.
symbols
announced it all at once. When you’ve got an arrow stuck in you, it’s sometimes best to just yank it out in one pull.” Actually, when you had an arrow in you, the best thing to do was leave it there until you could find a surgeon. Often it would plug the blood flow and keep you alive. It was probably best not to speak up and undermine the highprince’s metaphor, however.
Half the lads on that battlefield probably didn’t think they had any business being soldiers, at first, a part of him whispered. You don’t have the luxury of being bad at this. Don’t complain. Change.
of men, Kaladin. Nature doesn’t have them!” “If I toss something upward, it comes back down.” “Except when it doesn’t.” “It’s a law.” “No,” Syl said, looking upward. “It’s more like . . . more like an agreement among friends.”
“You could be fire,” Shallan said. “I am a stick.” The stick was not particularly eloquent. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised. “Why don’t you become fire instead?” “I am a stick.” “How do I make it change?” Shallan asked of Pattern. “Mm . . . I do not know. You must persuade it. Offer it truths, I think?” He sounded agitated. “This place is dangerous for you. For us. Please. Speed.” She looked back at the stick. “You want to burn.” “I am a stick.” “Think how much fun it would be?” “I am a stick.” “Stormlight,” Shallan said. “You could have it! All that I’m holding.” A pause.
...more
“Perspective,” Ym said, holding up his hand and wiggling his fingers. “From very close up, the fingers on a hand might seem individual and alone. Indeed, the thumb might think it has very little in common with the pinky. But with proper perspective, it is realized that the fingers are part of something much larger. That, indeed, they are One.” The urchin frowned. Some of that had probably been beyond him. I need to speak more simply, and— “Why do you get to be the finger with the expensive ring,” the boy said, pacing back the other direction, “while I gotta be the pinky with the broken
...more
“If we’re all just the same person trying out different lives,” the boy said, “you don’t need to give away shoes. ’Cuz it don’t matter.” “You wouldn’t hit yourself in the face, would you? If I make your life better, I make my own better.” “That’s crazy talk,” the boy said. “I think you’re just a nice person.” He ducked out, not speaking another word.
“It was forty years ago,” Ym whispered. “Justice does not expire.” The man shoved the Shardblade through Ym’s chest. Experience ended.
Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.”
function of one’s surroundings,” she said instead. “You’re saying I’m dumb because I was raised that way?” “No. I’m saying that everyone is stupid in some situations. After my ship was lost, I found myself ashore but unable to make a fire to warm myself. Would you say that I’m stupid?” He shot her a glance, but did not speak. Perhaps to a darkeyes, that question sounded like a trap. “Well I am,” Shallan said. “In many areas, I’m stupid. Perhaps when it comes to large words, you’re stupid. That’s why we need both scholars and caravan workers, guardsman Bluth. Our stupidities complement one
...more
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.
owe you my life,” Adolin growled, as if it hurt to say the words. “That’s the only reason I haven’t yet thrown you through a window.” He reached up with a gauntleted finger and tapped at Kaladin’s chest. “But my patience with you won’t extend as far as my father’s, little bridgeman. There’s something off about you, something I can’t put my finger on. I’m watching you. Remember your place.” Great. “I’ll keep you alive, Brightlord,” Kaladin said, pushing aside the finger. “That’s my place.” “I can keep myself alive,” Adolin said, turning away and tromping across the sand with a clink of Plate.
...more
“Huh,” Kaladin said. “Did he seem odd to you?” “You all seem odd to me,” Syl said lightly. “Everyone but Rock, who is a complete gentleman.” “He thinks you’re a god. You shouldn’t encourage him.” “Why not? I am a god.” He turned his head, looking at her flatly as she sat on his shoulder. “Syl . . .” “What? I am!” She grinned and held up her fingers, as if pinching something very small. “A little piece of one. Very, very little. You have permission to bow to me now.” “Kind of hard to do when you’re sitting on my shoulder,” he mumbled.
“Pretty good? You’d just been assigned to carry siege bridges until you died on the plateaus.” “Eh,” Lopen said, taking a bite of his food. It looked like a thick piece of flatbread wrapped around something goopy. He licked his lips, then handed it to Kaladin to free his single hand so he could dig in his pocket for a moment. “You have bad days. You have good days. Evens out eventually.”
What separates the heroes from the villains? One speech in the night?
Pattern hummed. “Truth is individual.” “What? No it’s not. Truth is . . . it’s Truth. Reality.” “Your truth is what you see,” Pattern said, sounding confused. “What else could it be? That is the truth that you spoke to me, the truth that brings power.”
“Pattern,” she said, tapping her pencil—one she’d gotten from the merchants, along with paper. “This table has four legs. Would you not say that is a truth, independent of my perspective?” Pattern buzzed uncertainly. “What is a leg? Only as it is defined by you. Without a perspective, there is no such thing as a leg, or a table. There is only wood.”
“Being unimportant is important. Being important is useless. Got it.”
go wherever the winds take me. It’s a good life, so long as you’re not attached to stuff.” “Stuff?” Shallan asked. “But you’re—pardon—you’re a thief. That’s all about getting more stuff!” “I take what I can get, but that just proves how transient stuff is. You’ll take some things, but then you’ll lose them.
listened to them last night,” Pattern said with a buzzing, excited voice from the back of her dress. “Is nonexistence really such a fascinating concept to humans?”
“They spoke of death, did they?” Shallan asked. “They kept wondering if you would ‘come for them.’ I realize that nonexistence is not something to look forward to, but they talked on, and on, and on about it. Fascinating indeed.”
“Sadeas and I agree that the means we choose to reach an honorable goal are allowed to be distasteful. Your father and I agree on what that goal should be—a better Alethkar, a place without all of this squabbling. It is a matter of perspective.
obviously struggling to keep her emotions in check. “I . . . apologize,” she said to Shallan. “I am not myself at the moment, and I stray toward the irrational. Thank . . . thank you for bringing word to us.”
“Does it matter who he’s working for?” Kaladin asked, sucking in Stormlight. “Of course it does,” Sigzil said. “Why?” “Because it’s a question,” he said, as if offended.
might be a creation of human perception?” “You’re a creation of your parents. Who cares how we were born? I can think. That’s good enough.” She grinned in a mischievous way, then zipped down
“Father said every officer should serve in the shoes of his men,”
Authority is not a real thing. Jasnah’s words. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion . . . as can you.
Tyn said that nothing would teach me, Shallan thought, but personal experience.
But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them; nor did they seek to increase this by great bounds, for during the times of Madasa, only one of their order was in continual accompaniment of Urithiru and its thrones. Their spren was understood to be specific, and to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious.
Bondsmiths
“I ain’t grouchy,” Teft snapped. “I just have a low threshold for stupidity.”
lol
“Everywhere I step, I find only corners,” Father whispered. “Slowly, they trap me.”
Freedom was as valuable as an emerald broam to Shallan, and as rare as a larkin. She hurried away, lest her father realize he had given no orders for her to be accompanied. One of the guards at the perimeter—Jix—stepped toward her anyway,
“I think . . . I think he will anger no matter what I or anyone does,” she said. “The sun will shine. The highstorms will blow. And Father will yell. That’s just how life is.”
“This is stupid,” Wikim said, lowering the papers. “What do you think you’ll accomplish? I can’t believe you wasted so much time on this.”
Very little in the world has ever gone astray—at least on a grand scale—because a person decided to be frivolous.”
“Then beauty, to that person, would be the times when the pain lessens. Why are you telling me this story?”
“You are,” Shen said, speaking in his slow way, “a good man.” “I’ve spent my life being judged for my eyes, Shen. I won’t do something similar to you because of your skin.”
“You are telling story wrong,” Rock said. “These are facts, not a story.” “Everything is story,”
“Often,” Navani said, “the simplest answer is the right one.”
unfortunately, he’d soon be required to run. Like a child dropped in a whitespine’s lair. Learn quickly or be lunch.
authors preface
“It’s cheating. Unearned.” “Nonsense,” Syl said. “You practice every day.” “I have an advantage.” “The advantage of talent,” Syl said. “When the master musician first picks up an instrument and finds music in it that nobody else can, is that cheating? Is that art unearned, just because she is naturally more skilled? Or is it genius?”
“I don’t like how you get,” she said, seeming small, “when you think about him. You stop being you. You stop thinking. Please.”
“You are a good man, Captain. I have learned much. My name is not Shen. It is Rlain.” “May the winds treat you well, Rlain.”
“All people are musicians,” Wit countered. “The question is whether or not they share their songs.
