“You’ve got a great chance in college to do all sorts of terrible irresponsible things, and you should totally do them. I mean, make huge mistakes. This is the time in your life if you screw up, it’s okay because you can bounce back from it.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means 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.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I almost got a psychology degree, I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn’t make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion, epistomology, and astronomy… I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“When you’re 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you’re 21 and you’ve read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren’t really good. OK, let’s be honest. A lot of them were crap.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I never set out to become ‘famous.’ I mean, when you’re 14 you think ‘I’m gonna become a writer and people will want my autograph and that’ll be cool,’ but you grow up and you learn that’s just not how the world works. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be published and if I did it probably wouldn’t be a big deal.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“A woman who goes around wearing a knife is obviously looking for trouble.” She reached deep into her pocket and brought out a long, slender piece of metal, glittering all along one edge. “However a woman who carries a knife is ready for trouble. Generally speaking, it’s easier to appear harmless. It’s less trouble all around.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn’t be.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“They were everything they ought to be and nothing else.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Yesterday he had limped, but today there was no part of his feet that didn’t hurt, so limping did no good.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“One wife, you’re happy, two and you’re tired, three and they’ll hate each other, four and they’ll hate you.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“You’re sure your new roommate won’t be like the last one who wore tinfoil socks and had a tendency to occasionally urinate in the refrigerator. You’re sure you’ll pass Math 106 this time around. You’re determined to actually join some clubs this year and not just sit around in your dorm eating spray cheese from a can and watching youtube videos about cats.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I can’t give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn’t belong to me. She belongs only to herself.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn’t entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you’ll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Wrong things never lead to success. If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the Lethani there is no true success.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart’s yearning.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“A poet is a musician that can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“What is word for good together living? Nobody shits in the well?”I laughed. “Civilization?”He nodded, splaying his fingers: amusement. “Yes,” he said. “Speaking with hands is civilization.””But smiling is natural,” I protested. “Everyone smiles.””Natural is not civilization,” Tempi said. “Cooking meat is civilization. Washing off stink is civilization.””So in Ademre you always smile with hands?” I wished I knew the gesture for dismay.”No. Smiling with face good with family. Good with some friend.””Why only family?”Tempi repeated his thumb-on-collarbone gesture again. “When you make this.” He pressed his palm to the side of his face and blew air into it, making a great flatulent noise. “That is natural, but you do not make it near others. Rude. With family…” He shrugged. Amusement. “…civilization not important. More natural with family.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Why wasn’t I already kissing this woman? Why wasn’t I naked, eating violets, and playing music underneath the open sky?Looking around the room again, everything seemed terribly ridiculous. These people sitting on their benches wearing layers on layers of clothing, eating with knives and forks. It all struck me as so pointless and contrived. It was incredibly funny. It was like they were playing a game and didn’t even realize it. It was like a joke I’d never understood before.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Do you know why they call this place the Rookery?” Elodin asked. I shook my head.”Because it’s where you go if you’re a-ravin’.” He smiled a wild smile. He laughed a terrible laugh.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“My alar is like the ocean in storm. (Devi)”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“…every piece of the laughing was a tiny bird come tumbling out to fly around the room.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“Wilem: ‘What is the word for that here? A man who is intimate with both women and men?”Lucky?’ Denna suggested. ‘Tired? Ambidextrous?”Ambisextrous,’ I corrected.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I can’t count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“But laugh?” He pressed the flat of his hand against my stomach. “Here lives laugh.” He ran his finger straight up to my mouth and spread his fingers. “Push back laugh is not good. Not healthy.””Also cry?” I asked. I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek with one finger.”Also cry.” He put his hand on his own belly. “Ha ha ha,” he said, pressing his hand to show me the motion of his stomach. Then his expression changed to sad. “Huh huh huh,” he heaved with exaggerated sobs, pressing his stomach again. “Same place. Not healthy to push down.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“I will break your heart over a fucking library card.”
— Patrick Rothfuss
“As my father used to say: “There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.” – Kvothe the Bloodless (The Name of The Wind)”
— Patrick Rothfuss