Patrick Rothfuss

I can't give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.

That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.

Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.

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. In many ways, 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.

Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.

Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all the time you spend on entertainment. How much of your entertainment centers around stories? Most pieces of music tell stories. Even hanging out with your friends, you talk, you tell stories to each other. They're all stories. We live in stories.

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.

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think.

There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

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 spoke it soft, but close enough to brush against her lips. I spoke it quiet, but near enough so that the sound of it went twining through her hair. I spoke it hard and firm and dark and sweet.

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

This is the nature of love." Vashet said. "To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. This is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to paper all complete, the others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done.

The cost of a loaf is a simple thing, and so a loaf is often sought, but some things are past valuing: laughter, land, and love are never bought.

It is quite a thing. There are so many men, all endlessly trying to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me lest I fall.

If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.

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.

It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one.

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.