Tress of the Emerald Sea

by Brandon Sanderson

memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.

We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale.

More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience.

Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been.

Those memories aren’t alive. You are.

Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts—but those thoughts are often owned by others.

is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds.

If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.

But after spending ages walking around with everyone piling bricks in your arms, it can throw you off balance when someone removes a brick to carry for you.

“It’s really not a problem that someone needs to be saved. Everyone needs help. It’s hard to be the person who makes trouble, but the thing is, everyone makes trouble. How would we help anyone if nobody ever needed help?”