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

by Patrick Rothfuss

“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.”

Her smile was like the moon through the clouds.

Ademic is a language that says as much with silence as with words. There is a pregnant pause. A polite pause. A confused pause. There is a pause that implies much, a pause that apologizes, a pause that adds emphasis….

No. This was hardly any sort of slap at all. A slap is made with the fingers or the palm. It stings or startles. Vashet struck me with her open hand, but behind that was the strength of her arm. Behind that was her shoulder. Behind that was the complex machinery of her pivoting hips, her strong legs braced against the ground, and the ground itself beneath her. It was like the whole of creation striking me through the flat of her hand,

Cyphus bears the blue flame. Stercus is in thrall of iron. Ferule chill and dark of eye. Usnea lives in nothing but decay. Grey Dalcenti never speaks. Pale Alenta brings the blight. Last there is the lord of seven: Hated. Hopeless. Sleepless. Sane. Alaxel bears the shadow’s hame.”

no man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”

But sometimes the best help a person can find is helping someone else.”

But even looking for her and not finding her was comforting in a way. In some ways that seemed to be the heart of our relationship.

“But the world is full of things that people would never sell. Favors and obligation are worth far, far more.”

“I’ve waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are,”