Mat > Mat's Quotes

“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I have an apple that thinks its a pear. And a bun that thinks it’s a cat. And a lettuce that thinks its a lettuce."
"It’s a clever lettuce, then."
"Hardly," she said with a delicate snort. "Why would anything clever think it’s a lettuce?"
"Even if it is a lettuce?" I asked.
"Especially then," she said. "Bad enough to be a lettuce. How awful to think you are a lettuce too.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“People got such a charge from seeing their names in print. Proof of existence. I could picture a squabble of ghosts ripping through piles of newspapers. Pointing at a name on the page. See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Let others determine your worth and you're already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves.”
― Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man

“I don't pretend to see the path, but I know it's there all the same. One day, we'll look back and wonder how we ever missed it.”
― Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man

“Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.”
― Brom, The Child Thief

“Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Belief isn't simply a thing for fair times and bright days...What is belief - what is faith - if you don't continue in it after failure?...Anyone can believe in someone, or something that always succeeds...But failure...ah, now, that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Difficult enough to have value. Sometimes we just have to wait long enough...then we find out why exactly it was that we kept believing...There's always another secret.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“That's a sweet piece," said Jean, briefly forgetting to be aggravated. "You didn't snatch that off a street."

"No," said Locke, before taking another deep draught of the warm water in the decanter. "I got it from the neck of the governor's mistress."

"You can't be serious."

"In the governor's manor."

"Of all the -"

"In the governor's bed."

"Damned lunatic!"

"With the governor sleeping next to her."

The night quiet was broken by the high, distant trill of a whistle, the traditional swarming noise of city watches everywhere. Several other whistles joined in a few moments later.

"It is possible," said Locke with a sheepish grin, "that I have been slightly too bold.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“Only one way to win when you're being chased by someone bigger and tougher than you. Turn straight around, punch their teeth out, and hope the gods are fond of you.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“A fragment for my friend--
If your soul left this earth I would follow and find you
Silent, my starship suspended in night”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
― Willa Cather