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

by Patrick Rothfuss

and I have always been most comfortable at night.

“My point is this. In each of us there is a mind we use for all our waking deeds. But there is another mind as well, a sleeping mind. It is so powerful that the sleeping mind of an eight-year-old can accomplish in one second what the waking minds of seven members of the Arcanum could not in fifteen minutes.”

held up his glass. “To old friends who deserved better than they got.”

It’s strange what thoughts flash into your head in these situations. The first thing I thought of wasn’t being horribly burned. It was that the cloak Fela had given me would be ruined, and I’d be left with only two shirts.

You’re my safe harbor in an endless, stormy sea.”

“You are my shady willow on a sunny day.”

“You,” I said, “are sweet music in a distant room.”

“You are unexpected cake on a rainy afternoon.” “You’re the poultice that draws the pois...

“Poetry is a song without music,”

“There is a place not many folk have seen. A strange place called Faeriniel. If you believe the stories, there are two things that make Faeriniel unique. First, it is where all the roads in the world meet. Second, it is not a place any man has ever found by searching. It is not a place you travel to, it is the place you pass through while on your way to somewhere else. “They say that anyone who travels long enough will come there.

The old man was going from nowhere to nowhere. He had no hat for his head and no pack for his back. He had not a penny or a purse to put it in. He barely even owned his own name, and even that had been worn thin and threadbare through the years.

He was hungry as a dry fire and weary to his bones.

“She sits by her window. She sips at her tea. She waits for her love, To return from the sea. Her suitors come calling. She watches the tides, And all the while Violet bides.”

You go rummaging around in other people’s lives. You hear rumors and go digging for the painful truth beneath the lovely lies. You believe you have a right to these things. But you don’t.” He looked hard at the scribe. “When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.”

And remember, small thaws make great floods, so be twice wary of a slowly changing season.”

“Remember: there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

He leaned forward. “Consider this instead. Those who have approached you are like magpies. They caw and flap around you, hoping to snatch something bright to carry home with them.” He rolled his eyes disdainfully. “What gain is there in that? Some small notoriety, I suppose. Some brief elevation among one’s gaudy, gossipy peers.”

As Dagon stepped into the room his eyes flicked to each of the corners, to the window, to the other door, briefly over me, then back to the Maer. When his eyes touched me, all the deep feral instincts that had kept me alive on the streets of Tarbean told me to run. Hide. Do anything so long as it took me far away from this man.

I’d seen Simmon pursue nearly every woman within three miles of the University with the doomed enthusiasm of a child trying to fly.

“Songs choose their hour and their own season. When your tune’s tin, there is a reason. The tone of a tune is your heart’s mettle, and there’s no clear water from a muddy well. All you can do is let the silt settle, or you’ll sound sour as a broken bell.”

Think of music as being a great snarl of a city like Tarbean. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move through the city like a rabbit in a bramble. I was quick and cunning and clever. Denna, on the other hand, had never been trained. She knew nothing of shortcuts. You’d think she’d be forced to wander the city, lost and helpless, trapped in a twisting maze of mortared stone. But instead, she simply walked through the walls. She didn’t know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn’t. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free.

These streets weren’t dangerous, strictly speaking. Or rather, they were dangerous in a broken glass sort of way. Broken glass won’t go out of its way to hurt you. You can even touch it if you’re careful. Some streets are dangerous as frothing dogs, where no amount of care will keep you safe.

I swear it by the ever-moving moon.”

the slightly weatherworn and world-wise attitude.

a vague hardness about her, as if she were constantly expecting someone to give her trouble.

nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.

“No,” he said softly. “I won’t have any part of it. Not for the world. Trying to help right now would be like trying to put out a fire with my hands. Painful, and with no real results.”

but it is simply the way of the world. Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.

I felt a moment of pity for her. I know what loneliness is like.

I threw myself against the bars of an intangible cage made of moonlight and desire.

I felt hollow inside and ached as badly as if I’d discovered my family never loved me.

felt better, not good by any means, but better. Less empty. My music always helped. As long as I had my music, no burden was ever too heavy to bear.

I felt my face go grim. 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.

Her laugh was wild as a fox’s cry, clear and sharp as morning birdsong. It was no human sound.

Only a fool worries over what he can’t control.

the world is wide and time is long,

could have dispensed with the truth entirely and told a much better story. Lies are simpler, and most of the time they make better sense.

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

“Seven things stand before The entrance to the Lackless door. One of them a ring unworn One a word that is forsworn One a time that must be right One a candle without light One a son who brings the blood One a door that holds the flood One a thing tight-held in keeping Then comes that which comes with sleeping.”

I sat in my room, thinking dark thoughts as the last of the light faded from the sky. I looked over the tools I had gathered and knew deep in my gut that sometimes a situation grows so tangled that words are useless. What other option did I have, now that words had failed me? What do any of us have when words fail us?

felt a familiar anxiety settle back onto me, like a dark bird clenching its claws deep into the muscles of my neck and shoulders.