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...

Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as...

After an awkward pause, Bast extended his hand. Chronicler hesitated for a bare moment before reaching out quickly, as if he were sticking his hand into a fire. Nothing happened, both of them seemed moderately surprised.”Amazing, isn’t it?” Kvothe addressed them bitingly. “Five fingers and flesh with blood beneath. One could almost believe that on...

I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.

And there was Ambrose. To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavours 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.

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.

Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

Metal rusts, music lasts forever.

She knew the way of things. She knew ifyou weren’t always stepping lightly as a bird the wholeworld came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards.Like a bottle against stones. Like a wrist pinned hardbeneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want andwine. . . .

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

Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.

There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.

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.

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.

Chronicler shook his head and Bast gave a frustrated sigh. “How about plays? Have you seen The Ghost and the Goosegirl or The Ha’penny King?”Chronicler frowned. “Is that the one where the king sells his crown to an orphan boy?”Bast nodded. “And the boy becomes a better king than the original. The goosegirl dresses like...

I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.

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. Nothing’s off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It’s easy to get distracted...

are sweet music in a distant room.

It’s a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving her alone. Good thing she’s used to it...

Think of all the stories you’ve heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed he sets out for vengeance. What next?”Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. “He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of...

When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.

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...

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

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff.The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just...

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.

A Tinker’s Debt is Always Paid:Once for a simple trade.Twice for freely given aid.Thrice for any insult made.

If you fall, you fall,” Elodin shrugged. “Sometimes falling teaches us things too.” In dreams you often fall before you wake.

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.

Dawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

She washed he hands,then looked at my side. “you haven’t even had it stitched?” She said incredulously.”I’ve been rather busy,” I said. “With the running like hell and hiding all night.

I was in my early twenties and I was, to be quite honest, a bit of a punk. A swaggering entitled straight white guy who hadn’t but a lot of thought into what it might be like to be anything other than a straight white guy. Because when you’re a straight white guy, you don’t...

But no. There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.

There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.

. . . but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It’s not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No.We all know what kind of story this is.

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

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...

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?”...

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

«Siempre he preferido las noches sin luna. A oscuras es más fácil hablar. Es más fácil ser uno mismo»—Denna.

So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin?

More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

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

We know how it ends practically before it starts. That´s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack”.

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.

…If there’s one thing I’m well versed in it’s my own good qualities.

She was not vain enough to work her will against the world. But she could use the things the world had given her.

It’s quite enough to have a secret. Anything more would be greedy.

There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth.”Vashet smiled lazily. “And if the pursuit of the truth was my goal, that would concern me.” She gave a long yawn, stretching like a happy cat. “Instead I will focus on the joy in my heart, […}

She took another step. The simple motion of her moving leg was like a dance, the unexaggerated shifting of her hip entrancing as a fire. The arch of her bare foot said more of sex than anything I’d seen in my young life.