Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“You think that kid who starved didn’t want to eat? You think her parents didn’t want to escape the ravages of war badly enough? You think if they’d had more Passion, the cosmere would have saved them? How convenient to believe that people are poor because they didn’t care enough about being rich. That they just didn’t pray hard enough. So convenient to make suffering their own fault, rather than life being unfair and birth mattering more than aptitude. Or storming Passion.”

“A virtue is something that is valuable even if it gives you nothing. A virtue persists without payment or compensation. Positive thinking is great. Vital. Useful. But it has to remain so even if it gets you nothing. Belief, truth, honor … if these exist only to get you something, you’ve missed the storming point.”

“Life breaks us,” Dalinar said. “Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”

We have reached the end of days, and I hunger for something I cannot describe.” Pancakes? the black sword—strapped to Szeth’s back—said in their minds. Szeth, I think it might be pancakes.

“The best words are the ones most people don’t understand.” “That is literally the opposite of how language should function.”

your enthusiasm is infectious. Invigorating. Sometimes you’ll get focused on a topic and won’t let it go—which leaves me wondering what I’ve missed. It’s interesting.”

Adolin. Were you a slut

I, he thought to her, was not a slut. A trollop at worst. Besides, I find that a wise commander investigates every strategy, so that he knows his options. Of course, she thought. You are correct. A wise soldier knows all the best positions.

“Oh, you mean murder! Shallan is good at murder. Yes, mmmmm…” “Pattern,” she said, “please don’t say it that way.” “She is good,” Pattern corrected himself, “at making people who were once alive and threatening, unalive and unthreatening. Mmmm. Very good at it.”

“Like I’ve told the other women, if I let you in, you’ll have to live and work around men in what might be embarrassing situations.” “I’m used to it, sir,” she said. “I have papers.” Papers? He hesitated, then glanced at his scribe. “One who has filled out the forms,” Challa the scribe whispered, “to live as a man.” Ah. He’d heard of that. Well, the Azish did things their own way, didn’t they? “Good to have you, Sarkuin,” Adolin said to the man, and moved on.

The law doesn’t fix all ills, but it tries to—and you may have suffered, but you would have suffered more without the law. For humans cannot be trusted to be decent, Stormblessed.

Shouldn’t it be easy to tell what is good and evil? “We all pretend that it is,” Szeth said. “But if it were, then we would not disagree so much.”

“Actions should be right or they should be wrong. That’s what I was taught.” “When you were a child,” she said, “you were taught what a child can understand. Why does nuance terrify you, Szeth?”

The question is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.”

For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method…”

“Understanding has never led to hatred. Show me. I cannot take your pain, but I can help you carry it.”

“I do not pay attention to made-up stories.” “Pity,” Kaladin said. “They have proven to be some of the most real things in my life.”

Even if an emperor makes the laws, when we uphold them, the laws become ours. The responsibility ours. And every action those people took … that blood was on their hands.”

“My father can’t end this war by drawing lines and trying to enforce them. If we want to end the war for real, we have to change hearts, not maps.”

An oath could be broken, but a promise? A promise stood as long as you were still trying. A promise understood that sometimes your best wasn’t enough. A promise cried with you when all went to Damnation. A promise came to help when you could barely stand. Because a promise knew that sometimes, being there was all you could offer.

“Are you … are you his spren? His god?” “No,” Kaladin said. “I’m his therapist.”

He took to heart the lessons of his realm: that in this case, the destination wasn’t about a place, but about a Connection. It was about who you had become, not about where you arrived.

“Ishar, what … what good is it to fight now? Why struggle? Why care? The Stormfather is gone. Jezrien is gone. We have lost, finally. Honor is dead.” “Yes,” a quiet voice said. “Honor is dead.” Both Heralds spun to see Kaladin Stormblessed slowly pushing himself up to a seated position, hair disheveled, blue uniform rumpled, dirt on his face. He looked at his right hand, what was left of it, and grimaced. Then he sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “But,” Stormblessed said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“No hero dies alone,” Renarin read, written in halting words by his own hand, “for he carries with him the dreams of everyone who continues to live.