Kingkiller Chronicles Quotes

“Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“...unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music...but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

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.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You wouldn't think a girl in bandages with a blackened eye could be beautiful, but Denna was. Lovely as the moon: not flawless, perhaps, but perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I can tell the whole thing in one breath. I trouped, traveled, loved, lost, trusted and was betrayed.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Still there are worse things than playing in the rain.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Distrust turns quickly to dislike.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“My granda always told me that fall's the time to root up something you dont want coming back to trouble you. Autumn...Autumn's the time. In autumn, everything is tired and ready to die.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Believe it with a faith that will move mountains and shake trees.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Have you ever been annoyed and amused with yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling, to say the very least.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“I don't remember starting out that morning, but I do remember trying to sleep and feeling quite alone except for a dull, bittersweet ache.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“My mind was learning to work in different ways, becoming stronger. It felt the same way your body feels after a day of splitting wood, or swimming, or sex. You feel exhausted, languorous, and almost godlike. I could feel my mind starting to awaken.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You need to learn your letters before you can write. You need to learn the fingerings on the strings before you play and sing.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Remember this son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who 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 no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Some small rational part of me realized I was in deep shock. It repeated the fact to me again and again. I did not want to think of what I saw. I did not want to know what had happened here. I did not want to know what any of this meant.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Time is the great healer, and so on.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind