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June 11 - June 30, 2025
IF ONE OF US WERE TO DIE, THEN OUR FOLLOWERS WOULD BE ABLE TO DRAW POWER WITHOUT BEING BOUND—AS OUR WILL WAS WHAT MAINTAINED THE COVENANT.
WE COULD SENSE EACH OTHER. ALL EXCEPT A FEW—LIKE EURIDRIUS, HOLDER OF REASON—WHO HAD VANISHED. OR LIKE AMBITION, WHO HAD BEEN DESTROYED.
THE HEROES. LERAS, KNOWN AS PRESERVATION, WHO HAD ALWAYS HAD SUCH A STRONG NATURE. ATI, PERHAPS KINDLIEST AMONG US, WHO HAD BOLDLY TAKEN UP RUIN. EDGLI, ENDOWMENT, WHO WAS THE MOST COMPASSIONATE WOMAN I HAD EVER KNOWN. BAVADIN, SHREWD AND CAPABLE. CHAN KO SAR, INVENTION, WHO TRAVELED THE COSMERE CREATING GREAT MARVELS.
I MADE ONE FINAL ATTEMPT AT LOCATING VALOR, THE GREAT DRAGON GOD MEDELANTORIUS—AS SHE WAS A WARRIOR WHO WOULD SURELY JOIN ME. MEDELANTORIUS WAS NOT TO BE FOUND, UNFORTUNATELY.
The third rule of warfare is to attack where your opponent is weak. Every man is both weak and strong. Confront his weakness with your strength. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
I do not assume that without religion, there would be nothing for people to go to war over. “If you assume I will crusade against religion or other Shards simply because they exist, then you make a mistake. The same mistake made by all who give petty, casual thought to my heresy. They assume I replace religious ideology with an ideology of their absence. That is not the case. I am against dogma of any variety. God, nationality, or philosophy—when you become a slave to it without capacity to change or reconsider, that is the problem.”
“When new information arrives,” Jasnah said, “I change.
Not every win is a victory. And not every loss is a defeat. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
“You storming idiot,” Lopen said, his expression dark but his grin wide as he leveled his spear. “It’s not the number of hands that makes a man, but the number of cousins.”
It is often said that the best teacher is failure. This is true. But it is also the best killer. May you be lucky enough in failure to live, and unlucky enough in success to struggle. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
“Did you know,” he whispered, “there is a world out there with an ocean in the sky? Another where people fly upon kites, as if every man were a Windrunner. Yet another where the gods can make any object stand up and walk?
SOMETHING DANGEROUS, EVEN TO A GOD. THE COUNTER TO MY ESSENCE. ANTI-LIGHT, IT COULD BE CALLED. WORSE, THE SHOCK WAVE OF OUR CLASH SURGED BENEATH US, POWER RUSHING AND VIBRATING WITH THOSE TERRIBLE TONES. I REALIZED TOO LATE THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THIS LAND, BENEATH THIS CITY. PIECES OF SOMETHING FALLEN. A … FOURTH MOON? IN SPLINTERS? IT REACTED TO US, AND I SAW PEOPLE THERE—NEW ONES, WATCHERS, WHO HAD BEEN HIDDEN FROM ME. THOSE PIECES OF THE SKY … THEY SHELTERED FROM THE EYES OF GOD? THAT WAS NOT ALUMINUM. IT WAS SOMETHING GREATER. SOMETHING … THAT RESPONDED TO OUR CLASH, THE
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Rarely, the wise will also seek—in loss—to flip the board and scatter the pieces. But if you do this, it is likely the last time you will play. This also is not an adage for towers. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
“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.”
I FELT PROFOUNDLY UNWORTHY, FOR THE QUIET PIECE OF MYSELF WAS BECOMING LOUD NOW. THE PIECE THAT KNEW THAT I, AND THE FIFTEEN OTHERS, HAD DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLE ON YOLEN.
HAVING NO GOD IS FAR PREFERABLE TO HAVING A HEARTLESS ONE. AND A GOD WHO CARES? YOU KILLED THAT GOD.
The best players win two of three games against skilled opponents. In other words, even the finest lose a significant amount. Do not set up unless you are prepared for loss. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
Adolin didn’t want to follow an example. He wanted nothing to do with all of this, and he wanted the good men whose names he memorized to stop storming dying.
IN THAT MOMENT, I UNDERSTOOD THE DEPTHS OF OUR STUPIDITY—FOR IN SHATTERING ADONALSIUM, WE HAD REMOVED THE DIVINE SENSE OF LOVE AND COMPASSION FROM THE OTHER SHARDS. THAT ONE HAD GONE TO AONA, AMONG THE BEST OF US, AND THEREFORE AMONG THE FIRST RAYSE HAD SOUGHT OUT TO KILL.
Never assume the game actually replicates real life. —Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown
Adolin did not dance. A duel was a dance. This was not something beautiful, and he was no poet. This was a man, a fallen city, and anger culminating in blood to spill. First theirs, then his.
The Wind was not there for the contest of champions, the final confrontation between Odium and the mortals who would oppose him. She felt ostracized from that world, where it was Storms—and not Wind—who drew attention. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 18
I know that to this day, people are confused by how at the end, spren began arriving in the East without the need for bonds. Notum, now among the most famous of honorspren, is an example. The answer is simple, however. As the lands began to think of them, and remember them, they needed less the bond of a single person to give them purchase in the Physical Realm. For the thoughts of an entire people bolstered them. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 46
The dirty secret is that all governments are quietly republics—the voting is simply done with the sword or with coin. Everyone conveniently neglects to tell the lower class that it’s their coin, and their lack of swords.
I record here the notes of the song. The Wind knows it very well. I cannot hear her voice, but sometimes I hear the flute. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 117
A story might have been told before, but you haven’t told it. Every idea might have been thought, but each is new again when you think them.
Curiously, the closest I came to the Knight of Wind and the Knight of Truth during their quest happened during the last hours before Stormfall. When they visited my parents’ house, while I was asleep, and purchased their wagon. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 27
“Strange,” Sebarial said, “how we can accidentally become good men, eh, Dalinar? A few choices here and there, and suddenly we’re respectable.
I will leave one to ponder upon the incredible irony of the Herald of Bonds deciding he needed to teach Szeth, of all people, how to be humble. As if years of slavery weren’t a capable instructor. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 83
I often reflect upon how the world changed that day. And how I spent it, completely unaware, working in the family orchard. Picking fruit while the End of All Things itself came upon us. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 92
I find stories of the Knight of Wind to be most intriguing. They call him Stormblessed, but best I can tell, the storm alternately tried to kill him and proclaim him its son. I wonder what it knew that we do not. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 34
His worth did not come from whether he helped. Only in whether he tried.
Much of what I know of the Knight of Wind, I get from Jasnah Kholin. Now head of our order, and a woman who has shown much patience for a simple Shin bookworm who thinks herself worthy of the task of writing this account. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 22
Adolin had no idea what he was, other than the son of both Dalinar and Evi Kholin. The product of both of their hopes. He was Adolin Kholin. A man with very good friends.
To this day, I wish I had all the answers. Would that someday, a historian could make a record with all possible information at her fingertips. For example, what was it Ishu did to prepare himself for what he knew the Knights would attempt? It still baffles explanation, as do many Bondsmith arts. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 201
“I have traveled Shadesmar,” Mraize said, staring—with what she thought was genuine longing—at her Lightweaving. “I have met aethers and dragons. But no, I was never allowed onto another world.”
I can say this. I believe the fact that Ishu was bearing some of the pain of each and every Herald is an extremely relevant point in this analysis. For while he gave the darkness, he indeed held it in part. I keep returning to this idea. As I feel it should be explored further. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 201
“They are those who have been forgotten,” Maya whispered. “Blades and Plate who are no longer thought of. Dropped into the sea, lost, buried in stone, discarded by time.” “They … eventually fade back into Shadesmar,” Adolin said, remembering what she’d told him. “To wander forever,” she said. “But I haven’t forgotten them. And they, like me, have not forgotten you.”
“a promise is something deeper than an oath.”
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.
You could have been immortal.” “I can barely struggle through the life I have been given,” Szeth said. “I wish no more of it than that.”
For the events surrounding the contest at Urithiru, I must refer you to another volume of this multi-author work. One that has, unfortunately, not yet been written. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 238
There were not two heroes that day, but many. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 237
And the existence of those several key people is the one thing that I myself have heard from the Wind. This singular truth, a nugget that I cannot yet explain. “One is not enough. The change must come from many.” —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 237
I can’t speak to that. But I can speak to the testimony of one man’s experience. That of what it felt like to be in the very depths of despair, and then to have someone stand up and try their best to shield you from it. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 237
“I will protect myself, so that I may continue to protect others.”
The Wind itself accepted his Words. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 249
The curious effect that the Black Sword has on individuals is one that I find poorly recorded. It is true that many feel nausea when picking it up, which is a sign of a heart uncorrupted by greed. Others are, then, corrupted by that greed. Most interesting are those in between. Those who feel neither emotion. Those who can use the sword, but walk a fine line upon its edge. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 266
Those who were not there, you future readers, understand. Even hundreds of miles away from the event, I heard the thunder. The land trembled at what Dalinar Kholin did. —From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 181
The power accepted those definitions of it. It was the power of oaths and the pride that men bore at being thought of as men of oaths. As Dalinar had witnessed: thousands of years of warfare to prove who was right, and who deserved this land. The power didn’t care about self-improvement, but it cared deeply about being right.
