Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

first knew the Wind as a child, during days before I knew dreams. What need has a child of dreams or aspirations? They live, and love, the life that is.

“If it weren’t for that capacity, then what good would choices be? If we never had the power to do terrible things, then what heroism would it be to resist?”

“I’m a storyteller,” Wit said, with a flip of his fingers. “I have the right to redefine words.” “That’s stupid.” “That’s literature.”

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.

“A virtue is something that is valuable even if it gives you nothing. A virtue persists without payment or compensation.

“Oh, Sazed is among the best. Hope I get to meet him someday.”

Kelek cocked his head. “Light … Yes. Light, energy, matter, Investiture. They’re all variations on a theme—the same essence, in different forms. That is especially important for you to understand, with your illusions.”

Adolin Kholin, highprince, son of the most powerful man on the planet, renowned swordsman, was secretly one of the goofiest people she’d ever known.

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.