Brandon Sanderson Quotes

“You should try not to talk so much, friend. You’ll sound far less stupid that way.”

“But you can’t kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”

“I’ve always been very confident in my immaturity.”

“My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I’m quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.”

“Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.”

“There’s always another secret.”

“I’m not really sure why. But... do you stop loving someone just because they betray you? I don’t think so. That’s what makes the betrayal hurt so much - pain, frustration, anger... and I still loved her. I still do.”

“Men rarely see their own actions as unjustified.”

“Being an annoyance is something that I am very good at. In fact, I’m far more than just a ‘mild’ annoyance--people tell me I can be downright frustrating. Might as well use this talent for the cause of good, eh?”

“The right belief is like a good cloak, I think. If it fits you well, it keeps you warm and safe. The wrong fit however, can suffocate.”

“Women? Women are like...thunderstorms. They’re beautiful to look at, and sometimes they’re nice to listen to-but most of the time they’re just plain inconvenient.”

“Honestly, for an evil god of darkness, he certainly can be dull.”

“And Vin liked solitude. When you’re alone, no one can betray you.”

“That’s kind of what trust is, isn’t it? A willful self-delusion.”

“If you’re always on time, it implies that you never have anything better you should be doing.”

“He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn’t beaten.”

“What is belief - what is faith - if you don’t continue it after failure?”

“If men should read these words, let them know that power is a heavy burden. Seek not to be bound by its chains.”

“I have no idea what you just said, child,′ Breeze said. ‘So I’m simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.”

“The man who wants you to trust him is the one you must fear the most.”

“You can’t just avoid the game by saying you don’t want to play.”

“There is beauty in compassion, but one must learn wisdom too.”

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

“Every action we take has consequences, Vin,” Kelsier said. “I’ve found that in both Allomancy and life, the person who can best judge the consequences of their actions will be the most successful.”

“In the end, I worry that my arrogance shall destroy us all.”

“Expectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.”

“Power is an illusion of perception.”

“Brightness Markal! What a disaster that hairstyle is; how brave of you to show it to the world.”

“Life before Death. Strength before Weakness. Journey before Destination.”

“Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right.”

″‘If I should die,’ Dalinar said, ‘then I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.‘”

“I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

″‘Brightness...I believe you stray into sarcasm.’ ‘Funny.I thought I’d run straight into it,screaming at the top of my lungs.‘”

“Sometimes the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”

“Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her?”

″‘There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives.’ ‘And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?’ ‘That’s like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can’t protect by killing.‘”

″‘Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong. ... Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.‘”

“Too many scholars think of research as purely a cerebral pursuit. If we do nothing with the knowledge we gain, then we have wasted our study. Books can store information better than we can--what we we do that books cannot is interpret. So if one is not going to draw conclusions, then one might as well just leave the information in the texts.”

“It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.”

A man’s emotions are what define him, control is the hallmark of true strength. To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.

″‘What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn’t live until it is imagined in someone’s mind.’ ‘What does the story mean, then?’ ‘It means what you want it to mean,’ Hoid said. ‘The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.‘”

“I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I’ll open my eyes and look back at them, and they’ll know that I survived.”

“No complaining today. You do this thing too much. Do not make me kick you. I do not like kicking. It hurts my toes.”

“One can ignore a poor shirtless wretch doing such labor, but none ignore a king sharing the load. Perhaps we should switch places more often. If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest of men, perhaps there will be those who will help him with his own load, so invisible, yet so daunting.”

“Overcome your guilt. Care, but not too much. Take responsibility, but don’t blame yourself. Protect, save, help- but know when to give up. They’re precarious ledges to walk. How do I do it?”

″‘I can see what you’re up to.’ ‘Five foot six inches,’ Shallan said. ‘I suspect that’s all I will ever be up to, unfortunately.‘”

“Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.”

“In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished”

″‘I ain’t grouchy,’ Teft snapped. ‘I just have a low threshold for stupidity.‘”

″‘You sent him to the sky to die, assassin,’ Kaladin said, Stormlight puffing from his lips, ‘but the sky and the winds are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your life.‘”

“I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. ... A woman’s strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role.”

“Words are where most change begins.”

″‘You could be fire,’ Shallan said. ‘I am a stick.’ The stick was not particularly eloquent.”

″‘Storms, you’re spoiled,’ Kaladin said, smiling. ‘I’m refined, you insolent farmer,’ Adolin said. Then he grinned. ‘Besides, I’ll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here.’ ‘Poor boy.‘”

″‘You want too much of me’ he snapped at her as he reached the other side of the chasm. ‘I’m not some glorious knight of ancient days. I’m a broken man. Do you hear me Syl? I’m broken.’ She zipped up to him and whispered ‘That’s what they all were, silly.‘”

“Expectation wasn’t just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.”

“Jasnah held up a finger to quiet her. ‘All things have three components: the soul, the body, and the mind. That place you saw, Shadesmar, is what we call the Cognitive Realm—the place of the mind.‘”

“Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.”

″‘I will protect even those I hate,’ Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. ‘So long as it is right.‘”

“All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”

″‘How . . .’ Dalinar said. ‘You fell into a chasm!’ ‘I fell face-first, sir,’ Kaladin said, ‘and fortunately, I’m particularly hard-headed.‘”

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”

″‘Father!’ Jasnah shouted. Gavilar hesitated as he stepped out onto the balcony, looking back at her. The balcony broke beneath him. Jasnah screamed, dashing through the room to the broken balcony, falling to her knees at the edge. Wind tugged locks of hair loose from her bun as she watched two men fall.”

‘To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.”

“Accept the pain, but don’t accept that you deserved it.”

″‘The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.‘”

“Yes, I began my journey alone, and I ended it alone. But that does not mean that I walked alone.”

“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”

“But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.”

″ In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I’ve practiced”

“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”

“You were not shocked when a child knew how to breathe. You were not shocked when a skyeel took flight for the first time. You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he knows how to use it.”

“There are several ways to achieve a goal. Failure is preferable to winning through unjust means.”

“A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fail, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.”

“The most important word a man can say are, ‘I will do better.‘”

“But merely being tradition does not make something worthy, Kadash. We can’t just assume that because something is old it is right.”

″‘I will take responsibility for what I have done,’ Dalinar whispered. ‘If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.‘”

“He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.”

″‘You’re not a monster, Shallan,’ Wit whispered. ‘Oh, child. The world is monstrous at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.’ ‘I am.’ ‘No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.‘”

″‘Your name is Lift, right?’ ‘Right.’ ‘And your order?’ ‘More food.‘”

“Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”

“I’m certain some will feel threatened by this record. Some few may feel liberated. Most will simply feel that it should not exist. I needed to write it anyway.”

“You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived.

“The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.”

“The sea was so open, so welcoming. Pay her a little respect, and she would carry you anywhere you wished to go. She’d even feed you along the way and lull you to sleep with her songs at night.”

“The sea was a strange mistress indeed. Open. Welcome. Inviting. Sometimes a little too much so.”

“Search for the need, Vstim had always taught her. Don’t be a barnacle, simply leeching money where you can, Rsyn. Find the unmet desire...”