rick. > rick.'s Quotes

“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

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“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

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“No, listen. I've got it now. You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she's beautiful, she'll think you're sweet, but she won't believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding." Bast gave a grudging shrug. "And sometimes that's enough."

His eyes brightened. "But there's a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you..." Bast gestured excitedly. "Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn't seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur
Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten.
Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer
Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding
Breathless her breast her high blood rising
To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty.

“That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him.

I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there.

No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually saw him.

Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“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.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Auri hopped down from the chimney and skipped over to where I stood, her hair streaming behind her. "Hello Kvothe." She took a half-step back. "You reek."
I smiled my best smile of the day. "Hello Auri," I said. "You smell like a
pretty young girl."
"I do," she agreed happily.
She stepped sideways a little, then forward again, moving lightly on the balls of her bare feet. "What did you bring me?" she asked.
"What did you bring me?" I countered.
She grinned. "I have an apple that thinks it is a pear," she said, holding it up. "And a bun that thinks it is a cat. And a lettuce that thinks it is a lettuce."
"It's a clever lettuce then."
"Hardly," she said with a delicate snort. "Why would anything clever think it was 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." She shook her head sadly, her hair following the motion as if she were underwater.
I unwrapped my bundle. "I brought you some potatoes, half a squash,
and a bottle of beer that thinks it is a loaf of bread."
"What does the squash think it is?" she asked curiously, looking down at it. She held her hands clasped behind her back
"It knows it's a squash," I said. "But it's pretending to be the setting sun."
"And the potatoes?" she asked.
"They're sleeping," I said. "And cold, I'm afraid."
She looked up at me, her eyes gentle. "Don't be afraid," she said, and reached out and rested her fingers on my cheek for the space of a heartbeat, her touch lighter than the stroke of a feather. "I'm here. You're safe.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I walked across the polished marble floor and sat on a red velvet lounging couch. I idly wondered how exactly one was supposed to lounge. I couldn't remember ever doing it myself. After a moment's consideration, I decided lounging was probably similar to relaxing, but with more money in your pocket.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”
― Allan Gurganus

“He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“All explicit knowledge is translated knowledge, and all translation is imperfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Good. Well. Shit." Locke rubbed his gloved hands together. "I guess that's that. I'm all out of rhetorical flourishes.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”
“Wow,” Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. “Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Ten times a day, every day, I wonder at having wandered so far, and then, alienated from myself, a stranger to myself, I go home”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness. Only I did not think it would be so soon. Or that he would precede us. Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond. I mistook him for a solidity, and now must pay. I am not stable and Mary not stable and the very buildings and monuments here not stable and the greater city not stable and the wide world not stable. All alter, are altering, in every instant. (Are you comforted?) No. (It”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“Patience and Silence had one beautiful daughter. And her name was Vengeance.”
― Amie Kaufman, Gemina

“Once is never. Twice is always.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn

“I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.”
― Carlo Rovelli, L'ordine del tempo

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea