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I don’t mind being called a liar. I am. I am a marvelous liar. But I hate being called a liar when I’m telling the perfect truth.
She did not demand or cajole. When she spoke, it was matter-of-fact. As if she couldn’t imagine a world in which you didn’t want to do exactly as she said.
Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.
I brushed any doubt aside. Only a fool disbelieves what he sees with his own eyes.
I have a good memory. That, perhaps more than anything else, sits in the center of what I am. It is the talent upon which so many of my other skills depend.
“What was his name?” She shook her head. “no calling of names here. I will not speak of that one, though he is shut beyond the doors of stone.”
He’s already come close to them, though he doesn’t realize it. Stick by the Maer and he will lead you to their door.”
Lackless/Lockless door
It all struck me as so pointless and contrived. It was incredibly funny. It was like they were playing a game and didn’t even realize it. It was like a joke I’d never understood before.
For the fighting itself you should feel only duty and sorrow. Only barbarians and madmen take pleasure in combat. Whoever loves the fight itself has left the Lethani behind.”
Perhaps it is beauty to move according to your nature.”
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….
“I would rather you thought well of me.” “I would rather have reason to think well of you.”
“So you have stolen the answers from yourself,” she said with mock seriousness. “You have cleverly fooled us by pulling the answers from your own mind.”
“Aturan is very explicit. It is very precise and direct. Our language is rich with implication, so it is easier for us to accept the existence of things that cannot be explained.
“A story is like a nut,” Vashet said. “A fool will swallow it whole and choke. A fool will throw it away, thinking it of little worth.” She smiled. “But a wise woman finds a way to crack the shell and eat the meat inside.”
But after taking the red, the key is knowing when to fight. Men are full of anger, so they have trouble with this. Women less so.”
“The point of all of this is control. First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. This is the Lethani.”
“It is the luxury of looking backward. You can do it forever, and it is useless.
Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart.
Elodin was the only other person I had met who could look at you like that, as if you were a book he was idly thumbing through.
You can tell a man who has been keeping all his anger to himself. It goes sour in him. It turns against itself and drives him to breaking rather than making.”
“A woman knows she is part of the world. We are full of life. A woman is the flower and the fruit. We move through time as part of our children.
“I am sorry to tell you this thing. You are a good man, and a pretty thing. But still, you are only a man. All you have to offer the world is your anger.”
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.”
“You have every right to hate them,” I said, feeling more anger and helplessness than ever before in my life. “But I’m a man too. Not all of us are like that.”
Kvothe is a Nice Guy
“A man who would do that to a girl is like a mad dog. He hain’t hardly a person, just an animal needs to be put down. But a woman who helps him do it? That’s worse. She knows what she’s doing. She knows what it means.”
“Remember it was bandits who took them,” I said as I turned to leave. “And remember it was one of the Edema Ruh who brought them back.”
“I believe everyone has some question that drives them. A question that keeps them awake nights. A question they worry at like a dog with an old bone. If you understand a man’s question, it brings you closer to understanding the man himself.”
I could tell she was long gone. A city feels different when Denna is somewhere inside it, and Severen felt as hollow as an empty egg.
She lay on her back and spread her hair to dry. Its wetness made a pattern against the stone that spelled the name of the wind.
“You’re not angry at me,” he said calmly, looking Bast in the eye. “You’re just angry, and I happen to be nearby.”
“He knows the hidden turnings of the world,” Bast said. “And what he doesn’t understand he’s quick to grasp.”
