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Kindle Notes & Highlights
a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking.
Very early mention of “lacking”. Lack and lock are important words in how they relate to the Lackless or lockless box. What is lacking from Kote?
but no, of course there was no music.
Music is lacking. Magic is lacking.
They drank with quiet determination,
Such an elegant line.
It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
Waiting to die like a cut flower? Also makes me think me of Kvothes sword training by the Adem. The spinning tree. But that’s might be a reach.
They had taken his sword and stripped him of his tools: key, coin, and candle were all gone.
For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him.
on account of Taborlin’s kindness, the tinker sold it to him for nothing but an iron penny, a copper penny, and a silver penny.
“Demons fear three things: cold iron, clean fire, and the holy name of God.”
He called himself Kote. He had chosen the name carefully when he came to this place.
A skilled observer might notice there was something his gaze avoided. The same way you avoid meeting the eye of an old lover at a formal dinner, or that of an old enemy sitting across the room in a crowded alehouse late at night.
It was deadly as a sharp stone beneath swift water.
“I saw the place in Imre where you killed him. By the fountain. The cobblestones are all shathered.” He frowned and concentrated on the word. “Shattered. They say no one can mend them.”
The sky was a featureless grey sheet of cloud that looked as if it wanted to rain but couldn’t quite work up the energy.
Kote knew with bleak certainty how long winter would be.
“You’d be surprised at the sorts of things hidden away in children’s songs.
“Don’t believe everything you hear in stories, Bast. They lie to you.”
“Then again,” he made a gesture as if to show how useless words were. “You are Kvothe.” The man who called himself Kote looked up from behind his bottles. A full-lipped smile played about his mouth. A spark was kindling behind his eyes. He seemed taller. “Yes, I suppose I am,” Kvothe said, and his voice had iron in it.
The light flowed across the bar, scattered a thousand tiny rainbow beginnings from the colored bottles, and climbed the wall toward the sword, as if searching for one final beginning.
If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.”
The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it’s spoken, can mean “The Flame,” “The Thunder,” or “The Broken Tree.”
My first mentor called me E’lir because I was clever and I knew it. My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it. I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String. I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them.
My mother had a natural gift for words.
I learned to love the feel of good words.
I’ll turn you into a poet with the soul of a priest.
Abenthy started to call me Red and I called him Ben, first in retaliation, then in friendship.
I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half of me where I’d hidden it, only to find I hadn’t hidden the stone at all.
If there is one thing I will not abide, it is the folly of a willful pride.”
Brace yourselves, the story takes a turn now. Downward. Darker. Clouds on the horizon.”
Summer was just deciding to make itself known again and everything was green and growing.
“I’ve known them by a different name. Waystones,”
A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”
Remember your father’s song. Be wary of folly.
All the flames were tinged with blue,
His voice was quiet, cold, and sharp. “Someone’s parents,” he said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”
“Ferula.”
PERHAPS THE GREATEST FACULTY our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain.
They were simpler pains, easier to endure.
Such was the power of his sight that he could read the hearts of men like heavy-lettered books.
pulled like iron to a loden-stone.
“No matter where she stood, she was in the center of the room.”
“Looks like I’m destined to be loveless.
I had a dragon to kill.
everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.
“I swear by all the salt in me: if you run counter to my desire, the remainder of your brief mortal span will be an orchestra of misery.
he moved with the weary calm that comes from knowing many things.
