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November 21, 2020 - January 23, 2021
It seemed not so long ago that they’d sat conspiring together about the kingdom they would forge. Now they barely spoke without reaching for their sharpest knives—stabbing them right into the most painful spots with an accuracy gained only through longtime familiarity.
The same old conflicts consumed the parshmen as easily as they had the Alethi brightlords. People who got a taste of power wanted more, then sought it with the sword. Ordinary people bled, and Lirin was left to stitch them up.
“Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you.
“I obey the person who holds the sword to my neck, General,” Lirin said. “Same as I always have.”
Navani merely guided people smarter than she was.
And so, the world’s first air transport had been named the Fourth Bridge.
“I find wisdom in men who knew to avoid the person I once was,”
Radiant could fight, and Veil could lie. But when they needed a problem solved quickly, it was Shallan’s turn.
The stare of one in power, who didn’t need to say it. You will not take this from me, the stare said. If you want favor for having been involved in this revelation, you’ll do it by assisting me—not by taking it for yourself.
Keeping secrets from Adolin was eating at her from the inside.
Every honor he’d been given seemed to highlight how vacant his life really was. Titles couldn’t fill a room with life.
You don’t have to smile. You don’t have to talk. But if you’re going to be miserable, you might as well do it with friends.”
Adolin Kholin wasn’t some distant brightlord or general who sat in his keep and pronounced edicts, tyrannical or wise. He was the type of general who drank with his men and learned the names of every soldier.
To pretend. It might be a front, but he’d found that sometimes the front worked even on himself.
“You don’t fight.” “That? Is not fighting. Is exterminating. Even cook can kill rat he finds in his grain.”
gallows humor
They are cremlings building a nest beneath the shadow of a great temple. They take pride in what they have done, but cannot grasp the beauties around them.”
“If you forget why you are fighting, then victory itself becomes the goal. The longer we fight, the more detached we become. Both from our own minds, and from our original Passions.”
Yet boldness can be one step from foolishness.
Zahel was a masterpiece painting intentionally hung in a splintered frame.
“Because I learned that conflict would find men no matter how hard I tried,”
The longer one of us exists, the more like a spren we become. Consumed by a singular purpose, our minds bound and chained by our Intent. We’re spren masquerading as men.
No army, no matter how clean its reputation, walked away from war untainted.
History is like that, always gobbling up the present.”
Facing this change with dignity was difficult, but he would do it.
The truth was, she merely knew how to harness the genius of others—as
“Every soldier reaches a point where he has to set down the sword.
We each have our own Voidbringers to slay, Brightness Sylphrena. No man can judge another man’s heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.”
You sacrificed some of your children so others could live. It was a law of nature. Humans didn’t understand it. But she did.
Protect some children. Sacrifice others. A choice only a god could make.
there is nothing more pitiful than a tool that has outlived its usefulness.
Never be unwilling to do something you might ask another to do for you.”
Never be afraid to show a little respect to those you depend upon, friends.”
“you can never have too many swords.
“or you accept the better path: that your actions define you more than your intentions. That your goals and the journey used to attain them must align.
“Vorinism and all that? Despite finding out that the Heralds betrayed us?” “The Heralds are not God, but His servants,” Godeke said. “Storms know, I’ve failed Him more than once myself.”
we are all aspects of the Almighty—that He lives in us.
Wisdom of the Heralds, it was said. He’d met some of those Heralds now, and they didn’t seem so wise to him, but whatever.
Often people just wanted to know they weren’t fools or weaklings for coming in. They wanted to know their pains were real, and that there was something—even something small—they could do about the problem.
War’s for young kids, not old dried-up pieces of bark.”
“If they turn us away, they turn us away,” she said. “But you can’t blame yourself for things that haven’t happened yet.
Dalinar said far more battles were lost by improper discipline than by lack of bravery.
Like everyone, deep down he wanted to be useful. Humans were orderly beings.
if a tool seemed broken at first glance, perhaps you were simply applying it to the wrong task.
In a hopeless situation, it’s easy to convince one another to give up.”
Recent scholarly reports indicate spren will change based on direct individual perception.
We’re all strangely normal. Or normally strange.”
I don’t think I’d ever realized, until that moment, that a person could be beautiful and ugly at the same time. When you’re a teenage boy, you want the beautiful people to be truly beautiful. It’s hard to see otherwise, stupid as it sounds.
“We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become.” “As long as it’s what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.”
This wasn’t the delicate beautiful dance of a duel—this wasn’t what he loved. This was butchery. Fortunately, he had some good role models in that realm.
