Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“Perhaps the question isn’t ‘What use is art?’” Wit mused. “Perhaps even that simple question misses the point. It’s like asking the use of having hands, or walking upright, or growing hair. Art is part of us, Kaladin. That’s the use; that’s the reason. It exists because on some fundamental level we need it. Art exists to be made.”

“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.”

If hope doesn’t mean anything to you when you lose, then it wasn’t ever a virtue in the first place.

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

The darkness was still there and wanted him to believe things would never change, but this little victory proved the opposite. Because while he might never be rid of the thoughts permanently, he was done letting them win.

And … sometimes I feel it would be so much more convenient for everyone if I weren’t there.”

For showing me the heights we can reach, regardless of the depths we once knew.”