Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“How do small humans keep going?” Syl said. “Where does their energy come from?”

I think Sanderson must be familiar with small children. This reminds me of my Anais

He was unprepared for Lirin to walk over and embrace him. Awkwardly, as it wasn’t Lirin’s natural state to give this sort of affection. Yet the gesture conveyed emotions Lirin found difficult to say. That he’d been wrong. That perhaps Kaladin needed to find his own way.

The difficulty of the father-son relationship

out. Healing is not an event, Pattern, but a process.

She didn’t deserve hatred, but understanding. It was hard to believe, but Veil insisted they try anyway.

“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?”

“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’s literature.” “It’s confusing.” “The more confusing, the better the literature.” “That might be the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard.” “Aha!” Wit said, pointing. “Now you’re getting it.”

I love that Sanderson seems to be poking fun of himself as an author

“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.”

“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.”

asked. “You did one of the most difficult things a man can do: you gave yourself a second chance.”

it’s not petty or cowardly to reject any relationship.”

You can be a good person and say no, Notum.

It was their home as well. The Alethi parshmen had been enslaved too, but had taken their homeland for themselves. In other circumstances, he would have cheered their fight—he knew precisely what it was like to have your dignity stripped away, to be beaten until you lost personality and volition, becoming a thing.

Kaladin is beginning to understand colonialism and his role in it as a descendant of colonizers

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

The Windrunners accepting one singer among them didn’t change everything—Kaladin knew, from chats with Rlain, that he worried they didn’t accept his people, just him. But it was progress.

This seems like a common problem. It makes me think of the people who say, "I'm not racist. I have a black friend."

“I can’t,” Sigzil said. “I’m not the man you are. I don’t belong here—not only in this position. I don’t know that I belong as a Radiant. I … I…”

Impostor syndrome

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 want me to say,” he whispered, “that we create systems—teachings, incentives—that encourage the right decisions. That we prevent war by building up societies where people choose peace. We prevent greed by nurturing governments where the greedy are held accountable. We take time, and we steer, but we do not dominate.”

dwelling on what you were, instead of what you are, never gets a person far.”

“That advice you gave about giving myself a budget and only losing that much?” “Yes?” she said, eager. “It was storming useless,” he said. “Sorry.” “Oh.” “If I start gambling, I stop caring,”

A good description of addiction

“Are there places worse than the one being threatened with utter domination by a dark, destructive god?” “You’d be surprised,” Wit said. “A few have political fundraisers.”

“To be fair,” Wit said, leaning against the wall near the door, “a great number of things terrify me. I mean, have you considered—really considered—how insane it is that society entrusts you mortals with children?

As I fear not the child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.

He knew that Renarin didn’t like to be touched.

Renarin seems to be on the spectrum

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

off. Sometimes a hypocrite is just a man in the process of changing.

“Can I touch you?” “What?” Renarin said. “Wearing these faces makes me nervous,”

grounding to prevent a panic attack maybe

It was unfair that convincing someone depended not on the strength of ideas, but the strength of the arguer.

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.”

She smiled at Nale. Sweetly, because a little sweetness enhanced basically any situation. Especially the ones where it made someone annoyed.

Rlain shook his head. “That’s too simple an explanation, Shallan. One side escalates, so the other must match—or go further. The Fused wouldn’t exist if the humans hadn’t begun to outgrow the land given them. The Heralds wouldn’t exist if the Fused hadn’t been created to stop this incursion. “In turn, the Fused hardened—growing more and more determined each time they returned, learning to fight and defeat the Heralds. Humankind was left desolate, which led to the founding of the Radiants. The war simply kept spinning, and spinning, and spinning. I can decry the bloodshed, but I don’t blame the singers of these ancient days. Humans broke their promises and invaded. What else would you do but fight?”

reminiscent of the European incursion on Native American lands I think this could also apply to Palestinians and Israel. The unmade like terrorist groups

Is that the only acceptable answer? One people or another has to be subjugated, or even destroyed?”

I try not to expect things that aren’t mathematically sure, Pattern said. People say that life tends to be irrational, but even irrational numbers can be computed with ease. You all are something beyond that.

“I cry for all of us,” Shallan whispered. “And for the pain that we all cause one another.

“I believe that in nothing are we so blessed,” Kadash continued, “as we are in our ability to accept one another as imperfect, yet trying.

“How should I know what humans are capable of?” she said. “They never make sense! Barely any of you even float!”