Top 401 Quotes & Sayings by Patrick Rothfuss - Page 4

After a certain point is reached the numbers cease to matter, and all that remains is the faceless mass of a crowd.

Isn't that the way of the world? We want the sweet things, but we need the unpleasant ones.

in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.

If I'd been whoring before class and waved a corset at him, no one would have thought twice about it!

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.

One of them had a large wooden sign nailed to its door proclaiming, NO SYMPATHY! I wondered what non-arcane visitors might think of the warning.

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

Thieves, Heretics, and Whores

I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.

I know there's a lot of talk about self-publishing right now. Everyone's giddy with the possibilities. And I'll admit that it looks good on paper: sell your books directly and keep a bigger chunk of the profit for yourself. No rejection letters. No hassle with agents. Sounds good, right?

I'm a firm supporter of the word polyamory. But that one is close to my heart.

It was only then I realized I didn't know the name of Elodin's class. I leafed through the ledger until I spotted Elodin's name, then ran my finger back to where the title of the class was listed in fresh dark ink: "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass." I sighed and penned my name in the single blank space beneath.

I've read fantasy my whole life. Quite literally; my mom read me The Hobbit before I could read stuff to myself. So I love fantasy; that's what I read for fun, it's what I read professionally to keep abreast of what's in the genre - it's where my heart is.

Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason.

You are an educated man. You know there are no such things as demons." Bast smiled a terrible smile. "There is only my kind." Bast leaned closer still, Chronicler smelled flowers on his breath. "You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

Everything said, you couldn't hope for a nicer day to have a half dozen ex-soldiers with hunting bows relieve you of everything you owned.

There is nothing quite so delightfully mysterious as a secret in your own backyard.

Stand alone books are nice because they have everything all in one tidy little package. Neverwhere was awesome because you get action, adventure, character development, the exploration of a strange world, PLUS resolution of all the problems and mysteries at the end. No lines no waiting. That's very satisfying. Multi-volume stories are satisfying too, just in a different way.

I've got a solid grounding in history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc etc. That means I actually have a good idea about how societies change and evolve. I know how a lot of them have actually functioned through the years. I can put together a culture that's cool and different, while still being logically consistent, so that it feels real. So many fantasy worlds are either implausible, cookie-cutter, or both. Mine aren't.

The framed tale is, in my opinion, one of the most natural ways to tell a story. If you think of it, the conceit of the frame-less story is actually the odd way of doing things. Without the frame, how do you know the context for a story?

Metal rusts, music lasts forever.

Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.

85% of modern music doesn't have a damn thing to do with music. It has to do with looking good. Name me one woman on the top ten right now who isn't absolutely smoking hot. You think that's a coincidence?

Auri," I asked slowly, "are you joking with me?" She looked up and grinned. "Yes I am," she said proudly. "Isn't it wonderful?

I don't actually have cable. I watch TV, but only shows that I buy on DVD. As a result my TV rage factor is pretty low right now. I do have a real distaste for those extreme makeover shows. I once caught a roommate watching one and proceeded to rant for almost 15 solid minutes about how, in watching that bullshit, she was actively contributing to the destruction of all civilization.

You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared.

What are the three most important rules of the chemist?" This I knew from Ben. "Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.

You never do things the easy way, do you?" she said. "There's an easy way?" I asked.

Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu’s angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn’t stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.

I don't try to take a person out of our world and put them into my world; that wouldn't work. It's sort of like bad Photoshop: If you see something Photoshopped together - and even if it's done pretty well - the eye catches on it. That happens a lot when people try to cut and paste people from our world into their fourteenth-century historical romance novel.

Performance and music are inexorably tied together. And hell, I'll watch Brittany's Toxic music video all day. But there's a difference between that and listening to Leo Kottke play guitar. One is entertainment. The other is Music.

I have a blog where I keep in touch with my fans. I write about things that are important to me. Sometimes on there I'll just tell a little story about the things that happen in my everyday life. People seem to enjoy them well enough.

For me the really cool parts of being an author don't have anything to do with getting onto a bestseller list.

I knelt and opened up my lute case. Moving the lute aside, I pressed the lid of the secret compartment and twisted it open. I slid Threpe's sealed letter inside, where it joined the hollow horn with Nina's drawing and a small sack of dried apple I had stowed there. There was nothing special about the dried apple, but in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

The good thing about working on the books for 14 years before they hit the shelves is that I worked out most of the kinks long before they were published.

Now it's virtually impossible to write a game that successfully provides challenge and frustration, and that's a shame. We are going to lose something that makes scientists, that makes doers, that makes hard-minded, witty, clever people, and I worry that those people aren't being made these days.

That is like throwing two virgins into a bed. Enthusiasm, passion, and ignorance are not a good combination. Someone is likely to get hurt.

He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.

For most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans.

I was reluctant to talk about my kids on the blog. I kept telling myself, "People aren't coming here for stories about your kids. They want to hear about the upcoming books, writing advice, conventions..."

The truth is I've worked a lot of things people would consider shitty jobs but I've never really hated any of them.

Half a King is my favorite book by Joe Abercrombie so far, and that's saying something.

The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

Feel free to call me by my first name: Master.

This is how deeply rooted stories are, folks. We crave them before we can walk, and we start telling them before we can talk.

Still, these days when I daydream about the movie, I don't think about the big picture. It's more fun for me to think of little things that would add to the movie. I like to think the powers that be would let me amuse myself with some small things in order to shut me up while they re-write the screenplay to turn Kvothe into a lesbian, shape-changing unicorn.

It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance.

Good lord woman. If i had tits like yours I'd own half the world by now.

I was nervous about writing Slow Regard.

I would never normally approach a woman in this way, but I couldn't help but notice that you have the eyes of a lady I was once desperately in love with. " "What a shame to love only once," she said, showing her white teeth in a wicked smile. "I've heard some men can manage twice or even more." I ignored her gibe. "I am only a fool once. Never will I love again.

My granda always told me that fall's the time to root up something you don't want coming back to trouble you.' Kote mimicked the quaver of an old man's voice. 'Things are too full of life in the spring months. In the summer, they're too strong and won't let go. Autumn...' He looked around at the changing leaves on the trees. 'Autumn's the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die.

You may have heard of me.

She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.

She reached up and lay her hand on my cheek. "You have the sweetest face," she said, looking at me dreamily. "It's like the perfect kitchen." I fought not to smile. This was the delirium. She'd fade in and out of it before the profound exhaustion dragged her down into unconsciousness. If you see someone spouting nonsense to themselves in an alleyway in Tarbean, odds are they're not actually crazy, just a sweet-eater deranged by too much denner. "A kitchen?" "Yes," she said. "Everything matches and the sugar bowl is right where it should be.

When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.

Auri took it, and peered inside the small leather sack. “Why this is lovely, Kvothe. What lives in the salt?” Trace minerals, I thought. Chromium, bassal, malium, iodine . . . everything your body needs but probably can’t get from apples and bread and whatever you manage to scrounge up when I can’t find you. “The dreams of fish,” I said. “And sailor’s songs.

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is.

My shrug was so nonchalant it would make a cat jealous