The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

by Patrick Rothfuss

Her playing was slow, almost stately. Too many people think speed is the hallmark of a good musician. It’s understandable. What Marie had done at the Eolian was amazing. But how quickly you can finger notes is the smallest part of music. The real key is timing. It’s like telling a joke. Anyone can remember the words. Anyone can repeat it. But making someone laugh requires more than that. Telling a joke faster doesn’t make it funnier. As with many things, hesitation is better than hurry. This is why there are so few true musicians. A lot of folks can sing or saw out a tune on a fiddle. A music box can play a song flawlessly, again and again. But knowing the notes isn’t enough. You have to know how to play them. Speed comes with time and practice, but timing you are born with. You have it or you don’t.

“Ah, that’s the problem isn’t it? Everyone knows a man’s reputation except the man himself.

“First. Our young lovers can try to express what they feel. They can try to play the half-heard song their hearts are singing.”

“It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”

Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.

Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.