Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)

by Brandon Sanderson

Want what you need, embrace it, desire it and bring it to you.

Not by a wind or a whisper.

I am a god, Syl had said. A little piece of one.

“It’s not the color of your eyes that is the problem,” Dalinar said, “but the severity of your accusation. The words you speak are dangerous. Do you have any proof, soldier?”

Stew. Bridges. They spoke so fondly of things that had once been emblems of their captivity.

You have to learn when to care, son. His father’s voice. And when to let go. You’ll grow calluses. He never had. Storm him, he never had. It was why he’d never made a good surgeon. He couldn’t lose patients.

“This picture is a lie,” Shallan said. “Yes.” “And yet it isn’t. This is what he became, at the end. To a small degree.” “Yes.” “So what is the lie, and what is the truth?”

This is what I would have been, Shallan thought, if I had not been raised in a household of fear. So this is what I will be today. It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth.

“Sadeas and I agree that the means we choose to reach an honorable goal are allowed to be distasteful. Your father and I agree on what that goal should be—a better Alethkar, a place without all of this squabbling. It is a matter of perspective. .

The image she’d drawn of herself came to her rescue. She could be that woman today—and that woman, while not emotionless, could push through the loss.

“Huh. That actually makes it sound like Turi—” “Don’t call me that!” a voice called from inside. “—that the idiot did something politically savvy.”

“You are not as good with patterns,” he said, sounding smug. “You are abstract. You think in lies and tell them to yourselves. That is fascinating, but it is not good for patterns.”

“It shouldn’t matter.” “Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. You want to change that? Well, you’re not going to do it by screaming like a lunatic and challenging men like Amaram to duels. You’ll do it by distinguishing yourself in the position I gave you. Be the kind of man that others admire, whether they be lighteyed or dark. Convince Elhokar that a darkeyes can lead. That will change the world.”

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

He’d drafted a law requiring that all people of less than average intellect be required to commit suicide for the good of the city. It had seemed reasonable. He had considered they might resist, but thought that the brilliance of the argument would sway them.

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

“If I protect . . . only the people I like, it means that I don’t care about doing what is right.”