"It will be worth it if I am remembered, if not flatteringly, then at least with some small amount of accuracy."

"If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today. I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Lord but I dislike poetry. How can anyone remember words that aren't put to music?"

"You will not find it in the words of poets or the longing eyes of sailors. If you want to know of love, look to a trouper's hands as he makes his music. A trouper knows."

"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."

"I'd heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word "utilize instead of "use."

"Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna."

"The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other."

"I shook again, tasted plum, and suddenly the words were pouring out of me."She said I sang before I spoke. She said when I was just a baby she had the habit of humming when she held me. Nothing like a song. Just a descending third. Just a soothing sound. Then one day she was walking me around the camp, and she heard me echo it back to her. Two octaves higher. A tiny piping third. She said it was my first song. We sang it back and forth to each other. For years."I choked and clenched my teeth."You can say it,"Auri said softly."It's okay if you say it.""I'm never going to see her again,"I choked out. Then I began to cry in earnest."It's okay,"Auri said softly."I'm here. You're safe."

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

"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."

"Only priests and fools are fearless and I've never been on the best of terms with God."

"She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important."

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

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

"I would never normally approach a woman in this way, but I couldn't help but notice that you have the eyes of a lady I was once desperately in love with. ""What a shame to love only once," she said, showing her white teeth in a wicked smile. "I've heard some men can manage twice or even more."I ignored her gibe. "I am only a fool once. Never will I love again."

"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."

"Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear."

"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."

"I was one of those. I meddled with dark powers. Isummoned demons. I ate the entire little cheese, including the rind."

"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."

"It exhasperated her, but she knew better than to force the world to her desire."

"I love her more than just a little. I think it's because we're both somewhat broken, in our own odd ways. More importantly, we're both aware of it."

"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?"

"What what," Trapis said as he hurried over to tend to her, his bare feet slapping on the floor. "What what. Hush hush."

"I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket," Wil said. "And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake."

"Bad business last night. Chances are, that would be all Graham had to say about the death of a man he had known his whole life. These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn't talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit."

"If I ever met someone without a single shadow on their heart, it was surely a child too young for speaking."

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

"There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books."

"So many thoughts, my kvothe. you know too much to be happy."

"I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me."

"Patience and propriety. It was the only graceful thing to do."

"The gesture was so tight with rage she feared she'd snap and crack the world in two."

"Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself."

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

"Too much honesty makes you sound insincere."

"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."

"But only a fool claims there is no such thing as love. When you see two young ones taring at each other with dewy eyes, there it is. So thick you can spread it on your brread and eat it. When you see a mother with her child, you see love. When you feel it roil in your belly, you know what it is. Even if you cannot give voice to it in words."

"We all know that when the lights are out all women are the same height!"

"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."

"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."

"One wife, you're happy, two and you're tired, three and they'll hate each other, four and they'll hate you."