The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

by Brandon Sanderson

All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that’s why you so often want to kill each other.”

“Teft,” Kaladin said softly. “We need you.” Need. That word had strange effects on men. Some ran when you used it. Others grew nervous. Teft seemed to long for it.

“When reading these books, scholarship and ignorance feel much alike to me,” Shallan said. “Ignorance may reside in a man hiding from intelligence, but scholarship can seem ignorance hidden behind intelligence.”

“I shouldn’t be so hard on our neighbors. They’re petty, yes, but it’s the pettiness of the ignorant. I’m not disgusted by them. I’m disgusted by the one who manipulates them.

Indeed, it seems to me that aging, wisdom, and wondering are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers.

“What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.”

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”

To be human is to want that which we cannot have.”

“I am. But weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.”