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

"They were everything they ought to be and nothing else."

"It's not over if you're still here, Chronicler said. "It's not a tragedy if you're still alive."

"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 by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. 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."

"Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn't be."

"When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it."

"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 by now, isn't it? Otherwise you might have hurt her. Otherwise you just might have broken that poor girl's heart."

""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 didn't know any better. Nobody had ever told her that she couldn't. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free."

"Kvothe continued, smiling himself "I see you laugh. Very well, for simplicity's sake, let us assume I am the center of creation. In doing this, let us pass over innumerable boring stories: the rise and fall of empires, sagas of heroism, ballads of tragic love. Let us hurry forward to the only tale of any real importance. His smile broadened. "Mine."

"What about falling?' I asked. 'If you fall, you fall.' Elodin shrugged. 'Sometimes falling teaches us things too. In dreams you often fall before you wake."

"What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first."

"Answers were always important, but they were seldom easy."

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

"What do you know of poetry? Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. "I know a limping verse when I hear it, I said. "But this isn't even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom. "It is a sprung rhythm, he said, his voice stiff and offended. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. "Sprung? I burst out with an incredulous laugh. "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."

"If she was beautiful at rest she was doubly so awake. Asleep she was a painting of a fire. Awake she was the fire itself."

"Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us."

"Congratulations, he said. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. "Ever."

"Losing Foxen was bad. It would leave her blind and lonely in the dark. Being trapped beneath the pipes and choking out her life was awful too. But neither of those things were wrong."

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

"He hesitated, then lifted his head and sniffed. "Have you been drinking? The question was more curious than accusatory. "No, Bast said. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow. "I've been tasting, Bast said, emphasizing the word. "Tasting comes before drinking."

"Pride is the luxury of the strong"."

"There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true."

"My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day."

"My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years."

"Wilem: 'What is the word for that here? A man who is intimate with both women and men?''Lucky?' Denna suggested. 'Tired? Ambidextrous?''Ambisextrous,' I corrected."

"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."

"I am Edema Ruh to my bones. That means my blood is red. It means I breathe the free air and walk where my feet take me. I do not cringe and fawn like a dog at a man's title. That looks like pride to people who have spent their lives cultivating supple spines."

"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."

"This isn't the hand of some swooning princess who sits tatting lace and waiting for some prince to save her. This is the hand of a woman who would climb a rope of her own hair to freedom, or kill a captor ogre in his sleep. And this is the hand of a woman who would have made it through the fire on her own if I hadn't been there. Singed perhaps, but safe."

"I don't care whose son he is. I won't go belly-up like a timid pup. If he's fool enough to take a poke at me, I'll snap the finger clean off that does the poking."

"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."

"You, I said, "are sweet music in a distant room."

"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."

"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."

"I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day."

"There's looking and there's looking. When some men look at you it's a greasy thing. It makes you want to have a bath. With other men it's nice. It helps you know you're beautiful."

"Once I knew what was bothering me, the greater part of my uneasiness left. Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear."

"What is a whore?"Unsurprisingly, that hadn't been one of the words we had shared over the last span of days. For half a moment I considered lying, but there was no way I could manage it. "He says your mother is a person men pay money to have sex with."Tempi turned back to the mercenary and nodded graciously. "You are very kind. I thank you."

"Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason."

"Are you hurt?""Absolutely," I said. "Especially in my everywhere."

"Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them."

"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."

"Pride and folly, they go together like two tightly grasping hands."

"His voice is like a thunderstorm, and his hands know every secret hidden deep beneath the cool, dark earth."

"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."

"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."

"Lies are simpler, and most of the time they make better sense."

"As I fingered my way through the songs, I felt my worries slough away. My music has always been the best remedy for my dark moods. As I sang, even my bruises seemed to pain me less."

"Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means 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."