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

by Patrick Rothfuss

Kote nodded. Bad business last night. Chances are, that would be all Graham had to say about the death of a man he had known his whole life. These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door.

“Anyone in town could have told you that.” The innkeeper frowned. “If it’s something everyone knows, I can’t afford to ask,” he said.

Potatoes, toast, tomatoes, and eggs.

a strange mix of grin and grim.

The innkeeper leaned back in his chair, his weary expression fading, becoming thoughtful instead. “I thought once I was there, things would be easy. I would learn magic and find the answers to all my questions. I thought it would all be storybook simple.” Kvothe gave a slightly embarrassed smile, the expression making his face look surprisingly young. “And it might have been, if I didn’t have a talent for making enemies and borrowing trouble. All I wanted was to play my music, attend my classes, and find my answers.

The nine masters looked down at me. I’d like to say they looked dramatic, like ravens on a fence or something like that. But while they were all wearing their formal robes, they were too mismatched to look like a collection of anything.

Telling a joke faster doesn’t make it funnier. As with many things, hesitation is better than hurry.

“If your name is getting too heavy, you should have Kvothe give you a new one.”

“Or else I’ll probably do something stupid beyond all mortal ken.” I swallowed. “And both of us will end up the worse for it.”

“There are two things you must remember. First, our names shape us, and we shape our names in turn.” He stopped his pacing and looked out at us. “Second, even the simplest name is so complex that your mind could never begin to feel the boundaries of it, let alone understand it well enough for you to speak it.”

“Small facts lead to great knowing,”

“You’re drinking with our only customer because you’re a shiftless layabout nobody would ever dream of asking for help in the fields.” Bast grinned eagerly. “Am I bored too?” “Of course you are, Bast. What else is there to be?”

“There’s a special way of thinking called Alar,” Wilem said. “You believe something so strongly that it becomes so.” He lifted up one drab and the other followed it. “I believe these two drabs are connected, so they are.” Suddenly the other drab clattered to the tabletop. “If I stop believing, it stops being so.”

“If we didn’t have impressive-sounding names for things, no one would take us seriously.”

“Names reflect true understanding of a thing, and when you truly understand a thing you have power over it.”

Clothes do not make the man, but you need the proper costume if you want to play the part.

“I didn’t know there were any of those sort of people around here.” “Those sort of people are everywhere,” I said. “The world wouldn’t work without them.”

“Everyone here is smart,” Fela said. “And Sim is nice, but …” “That’s the problem,” I said. “He’s nice. He’s gentle, which people see as weak. And he’s happy, which people see as stupid.”

“The majority of important things cannot be said outright,” Elodin said. “They cannot be made explicit. They can only be implied.”

Who I am. It’s nice to be able to take a vacation from myself every once in a while.

‘To ash all things return, so too this flesh will burn.’”

“Do all the women in the world secretly know each other?” Sim asked. “Because that would explain a lot.”

“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. This is a story of that place, and of an old man on a long road, and of a long and lonely night without a moon.…”

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. If you’d asked him who he was, he would have said, “Nobody.” But he would have been wrong.

Many things he saw, and many stories he told, and everyone was wiser in the end because of it.

“Old beggars in stories are never really old beggars,” Simmon said with a hint of accusation in his voice. “They’re always a witch or a prince or an angel or something.” “In real life old beggars are almost always old beggars,” I pointed out. “But I know what kind of story you two are thinking about. Those are stories we tell other people to entertain them. This story is different. It’s one we tell each other.” “Why tell a story if it’s not entertaining?” “To help us remember. To teach us—” I made a vague gesture. “Things.”

“Still,” I said. “There’s some truth in most stereotypes. A seed they sprouted from.”

“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” Simmon’s question came out of the blue. “Across the river,” I said. “Bed.” “No, no,” he protested, “I mean if you could go anywhere in the world.” “Same answer,” I said. “I’ve been a lot of places. This is where I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Contrary opinions are one thing. Contrary facts are another.”

“You looked too hard and didn’t see enough. Too much looking can get in the way of seeing, you see?”

“See little wooden Kvothe? See him looking? So intent. So dedicated. He’ll look for a hundred years, but will he ever see what is in front of him?”

“Penance

gall!”

But underneath it all, there was a tension in the room. A stranger would never have noticed it, but it was there, dark and silent as an undertow. No one spoke of taxes, or armies, or how they had begun to lock their doors at night. No one spoke of what had happened in the inn the night before. No one eyed the stretch of well-scrubbed wooden floor that didn’t show a trace of blood. Instead there were jokes and stories. A young wife kissed her husband,

“‘What do you think,’ he asked the boatman, ‘about Teccam’s theory of energy as an elemental substance rather than a material property?’ “The boatman replied he’d never thought on it at all. What’s more, he had no plans to.

“It would have been better if you’d been guilty in a quiet way, rather than be innocent so loud.”

“Hello, Master Elodin,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m going to be leaving the University for a term or two.” “Are you really afraid?” I noticed a whisper of amusement in his quiet, resonant voice. It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to. “It’s just a figure of speech.” “The figures of our speaking are like pictures of names. Vague, weak names, but names nonetheless. Be mindful of them.”

All Wise Men Fear

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.”

Alveron motioned me closer, and I leaned a bit. “Here is a great secret. Even my title, my riches, my control over people and the land. They are only granted power. It all belongs to me no more than does the strength of your arm.” He patted my hand and smiled at me. “But I know the difference, and that is why I am always in control.”

gaudy

“Look at that. Why would I ever want to win a game such as this?” I looked down at the board. “The point isn’t to win?” I asked. “The point,” Bredon said grandly, “is to play a beautiful game.”

gaudy.

banter

It’s hard to long for something that is always there.”

I’m doing a poor job of explaining this. 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.

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

“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.”

“Prouder than that,” Kvothe said. “The poorer you are, the more your pride is worth.