Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

He didn’t know any of them well, but it felt natural to use their names like that. He’d stopped revering people he didn’t know the day Amaram branded him. God or king. If they wanted his respect, they could earn it.

Kaladin strode out to meet his destiny, feeling like he was in control for the first time in years. Deciding to take the next step, rather than being thrust into it by momentum or crisis. And while he’d woken up feeling good, that knowledge—that sense of volition—felt great.

“Would that any of us,” he said, “could protect ourselves from the costs heroism often requires. But again, if there were no cost, no sacrifice, then would it be heroism at all?

That man he’d become after killing the Pursuer … that man frightened Kaladin. Even now, lit by calm sunlight. Remembering that man was like remembering a nightmare,

it’s been said I am an artist. Unfortunately, the primary subjects of my art can never experience my creations, as displayed upon their features.”

“The wrong people get far too much mileage out of things that sound nice,” Wit said. “Take it from a guy who is all too capable with a lie: nothing is easier to sell someone than the story they want to hear.

“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.”

If hope doesn’t mean anything to you when you lose, then it wasn’t ever a virtue in the first place. It took me a long time to learn that, and I finally did so from the writings of a man who lost every belief he thought he had, then started over new.” “Sounds like someone wise,” Syl said. “Oh, Sazed is among the best. Hope I get to meet him someday.”

“You know what first drew me to you, Kaladin?” Wit asked. “You did one of the most difficult things a man can do: you gave yourself a second chance.”

“Wit,” Kaladin called just before the man vanished. “What about my story?” “You will tell your own story this time, Kaladin!” Wit said. “And if you’re lucky, the Wind will join in.”

He turned to her, blue eyes meeting hers. “I lay on the ground, battered and assaulted, and watched your husband rise in my defense against overwhelming odds. He saved me with no expectation of reward. In that moment I knew that Honor lived.”

“I want to be better,” he whispered. “We all do,” she said.

“This attitude you put on? You think it makes you appear strong, but it doesn’t. Instead it makes very clear that something is wrong with you. Look at Syl’s effort. You should be thrilled! Who berates a person for bettering herself? Who sells books and stationery, yet feels the need to undercut someone overcoming enormous physical limitations to use them?”

“I create a country where there are no consequences. Is that so bad?” “You tell me,” she said in her infuriatingly calm way. Yes, it would be bad. He could see all the permutations of time, as well as attempts by other Shards like himself to do this very thing. By directly intervening on such a granular level, he risked creating a society where no one learned, and where civilization did not progress. By supernaturally forbidding warlords, he would also stifle scientists and artists. By removing the capacity for violence, he would also remove the capacity for mercy.

“You know, the queens of history were sometimes painted with one breast bare?” “Never did understand that,” Kmakl said. “Some nonsense about suckling a nation,”

Maybe that was why the men of the oceans sought to kill them and steal their sheep. It must make them angry to see such a perfect place as this. Those terrible men, like any petulant child, destroyed what they could not have.

Lift had learned that sometimes to listen—and really hear people—you also had to be there when they didn’t talk.

“Ideals are dead things,” Kaladin said, “unless they have people behind them. Laws exist not for themselves, but for those they serve.”

“How do I find what I need if the world is constantly in crisis?”

back when they were all burning down villages and slaughtering people. Their actions were considered honorable because they kept their storming oaths. Who cares about the suffering they caused, right? Everyone was honorable! That’s what matters!”

“Too many people,” Adolin said as his armorers began to put on his Plate, “think the oath, and not what it means, is the important part.

An inquisitive mind did not stop asking questions just because it found answers.

“A child taken from his home and twisted into a killer isn’t going to be likable. People who need help aren’t going to be reasonable all the time.

he’d obtained a wisdom that eluded most mortals. A simple, reasonable precept: if someone you deeply respected disagreed with you, perhaps it was worth reconsidering.

It was unfair that convincing someone depended not on the strength of ideas, but the strength of the arguer. Kaladin had always hated that, but again, he didn’t have the eloquence to explain why.

can no more be in opposition to that than I am to an imaginary childhood friend—you cannot wrestle with, fight, or oppose something that does not exist. I oppose the assumptions that people make.

What did you do when you weren’t enough anymore? When you had been the best all your life, but suddenly you were obsolete?

make things difficult,” Renarin said. “Because I don’t see the world the same way as everyone else, and they have to make accommodations for me. They have to explain differently to me, taking an extra effort. It causes me to feel like a burden. And … sometimes I feel it would be so much more convenient for everyone if I weren’t there.”

two sides delineated simply. One who can just be ‘the enemy.’ People can be wonderful or terrible; an enemy, though, can only be something to fight.”

“All men have the same ultimate destination, Dalinar. But we are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet. Your callused feet. Our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels. Your back strong from carrying the weight of your travels. Our eyes open. Your. Eyes. Open. You kept the pain, Dalinar. Remember that. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method…”