Patrick Rothfuss famous quotes

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Children #Growing Up #Thinking

Some people are going to be impatient no matter what. If I wrote two books a year, someone out there would be pissed I wasn't writing three.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Book #Writing #Years

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 how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Heart #Son #Men

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Writing #People #Everyday

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Heart #Men #Light

Generally my favorite remarks always come from my readers. I've had people say my books made them laugh, or cry, or that it frightened them late at night.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Book #Night #Laughing

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Clever #Keeping Your Mouth Shut #Half

I'm not a stereotypical professor type. I don't smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I'm more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Jobs #Long #Students

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Life #Wise #Wisdom

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Writing #Speed #Results

A poet is a musician who can't sing.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Musician #Poet

It's hard for me to take myself too seriously when I'm constantly experiencing firsthand what an incredible gimp I can be.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Incredibles

Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician's curse.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Music #Play #Different

My thought is, if you're a book lover, you're going to enjoy winning a book even if it's not something you'd ordinarily pick up on your own. It's a chance to expand your horizons a little.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Book #Winning #Horizon

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Pain #Reality #Blow

Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Book #Reading #Roots

I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Numbers #Littles #Sake

You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Writing #Character #People

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

#Thinking #Answers #Teach

I firmly believe that we're all good people, but sometimes it's hard to understand how to do good.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Believe #People #Good People

The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Powerful #Dragons #Shoes

What has made me most proud - the things that I've done that I feel the most pride about - is helping people care about making the world better.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Pride #People #Done

I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Circles #Names #Light

When left to its own devices it tends to make me look as if I’ve been set afire.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Looks #Devices

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

#Liars #Way #Stories

Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Waiting #Lasts #Instruments

I really enjoy work to a purpose. Maybe that makes me kind of strange. In some ways - and this is going to sound awful - it could be that writing is the worst job that I've ever had. Because it's so much more important to me and there's so much more opportunity for failure and I have so many people depending on me. In some ways it's the most satisfying, the most gratifying, and the most rewarding job I've ever had. But I actually would say it's probably the worst job I've ever had too.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Jobs #Writing #Opportunity

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

#Blood #Secret #Flow

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

#Needs #World #Mess

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Fall #Men #Feet

I can sell anything to anyone. That is actually my superpower. I am really good at negotiating and persuading.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Persuading #Superpower

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Relationship #Book #Female

The way I cook it's more like mad science. There's a lot of inspiration and dramatic failure with the occasional gorgeous success.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Inspiration #Mad #Way

You,” I said, “are sweet music in a distant room.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Sweet #Rooms #Said

I'm pretty good at putting up drywall and I'm an excellent kisser. That's pretty much all of my skills right there.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Skills #Excellent

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Confusing #Understanding #Way

I'm not officially a collector, but I have a strange attraction and a weakness for keys and coins. Old keys and interesting coins.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Keys #Interesting #Coins

If you fall, you fall," Elodin shrugged. "Sometimes falling teaches us things too." In dreams you often fall before you wake.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Dream #Fall #Sometimes

And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Special #Stories #Firsts

I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Reading #Swimming #Sharks

I'm not implying that fantasy is for kids. I'm saying that more and more people are finally realizing that there's more to fantasy stories than elves and wizards and goblin armies.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Kids #Army #People

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

#Teacher #Travel #Men

Reading is professionally important for me to keep tuned in to what's being written in my genre, let's not lie. But that's not the reason I read. I read for my own emotional and mental health. If I stopped reading, I'd probably just die.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Lying #Reading #Emotional

I know," she said. "You have a stone in your heart, and some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done. But you don't have to be alone for it. You should have come to me. I understand.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Heart #Done #Stones

It's not prowess if you watch 5 hours of TV a day. It's just how you choose to spend your time.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Tvs #Watches #Hours

We all become what we pretend to be.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

Nobody cooks using just one ingredient. Why would you write using just one flavor of story?
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Writing #Stories #Flavor

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Love #Heart #Perfect

I think authors are just realizing there's no real reason to feel limited to a narrow set of genre rules in their writing. There's no reason a mystery novel can't have fantastic elements in it. Similarly, there's no reason why your epic fantasy series can't have elements of a mystery.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Real #Writing #Thinking

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

#Writing #Novel #Needed

Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Pay #Might #Neighbor

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

#Jobs #People #Truth Is

You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Moving #Firsts #Notes

Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Regret #Forever #Bones

You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Study #Fortitude #Spine

Stories only happen to people who can tell them.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#People #Stories

It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Tragedy #Alive #Said

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

#Life #Healing #Identity

You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Summer #Women #Firefly

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

#Giving #Bottles #Way

To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavor of our relationship. It was more like the two of us entered into a business partnership in order to more efficiently pursue our mutual interest of hating each other.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Hate #Order #Two

Practice makes the master.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Practice #Masters

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Sleep #Giving #Mistress

Do you know what it's like to run spellcheck for six hours? It's like a party in purgatory. A party in purgatory where all they have to drink is sugar-free Kool-aid, and the only game to play is Monopoly, and none of your friends show up.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Running #Party #Games

That was another lesson I had learned perhaps too well: people meant pain.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Pain #People #Lessons

Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Song #Parent #Singing

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Thinking #Doors #Might

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Summer #Letting Go #Strong

I've always liked the moonless night best. It's easier to say things in the dark. It's easier to be yourself.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Being Yourself #Dark #Night

But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. This is rare and pure and perfect.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Perfect #And Love #Flaws

I don't speak fluent bumpkin...
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Speak

It doesn't eat meat." I said. "It's a herbivore. It's like a big cow." Denna looked at me and started to laugh. Not hysterical laughter, but the helpless laughter of someone who's just heard something so funny they can't help but bubble over with it. She put her hands over her mouth and shook with it, the only sound was a low huffing that escaped through her fingers. There was another flash of blue fire from below. Denna froze midlaugh, then took her hands away from her mouth. She looked at me, her eyes wide, and spoke softly with a slight quaver in her voice, "Mooooo.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Laughter #Eye #Blue

Congratulations. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Ever.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Congratulations #Stupidest

I learned to love the feel of good words.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Feels

In the hours that followed, I learned that Ademic hand gestures did not actually represent facial expressions. It was nothing so simple as that. For example a smile can mean you're amused, happy, grateful, or satisfied. You can smile to comfort someone. You can smile because you're content or because you're in love. A grimace or a grin look similar to a smile, but they mean entirely different things. Imagine trying to teach someone how to smile. Imagine trying to describe what different smiles mean and when, precisely, to use them in conversation. It's harder than learning to walk.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Grateful #Mean #Simple

On his first hand he wore rings of stone, Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone. There were rings unseen on his second hand, One blood in a flowing band, One was air all whisper thin, And the ring of ice had a flaw within. Full faintly shone the ring of flame, And the final ring was without name.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Air #Flames #Blood

It was more exciting when I didn't know I had permission.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Permission #Exciting

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

#Teaching #Men #Virtue

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

#Secret #Backyards #Mysterious

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Mistake #Dirty #Knives

I needed to let them know they couldn't hurt me. I've learned that the best way to stay safe is to make your enemies think you can't be hurt.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Hurt #Thinking #Enemy

There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and know the same women.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Men #Enemy #Camaraderie

We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Mask #Dangerous

The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Childhood #Behinds

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Character #Sleep #Taught

But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Life #Awful #Enough

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.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Witty #Clever #Writing

Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Hurt #Pain #Distance

The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Dust #Smell #Air

My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I'm paying for it.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Tangled #Decision #Luck

A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Years #Long #Quiet

One of my favorite artists on Deviantart.
-- Patrick Rothfuss

#Artist #My Favorite