Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Fiction Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Sunday Inspirational Quotes, Moving Forward Quotes, Path Quotes

2. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Purpose Quotes

3. “Nothing will train you better as a writer than working on your next book.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Quotes About Writing, Practice Quotes, Book Quotes

4. “The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.”

— Brandon Sanderson

5. “Every man is a hero of his own story.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Hero Quotes, Quotes About Stories

6. “The most important step a person can take is always the next one.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

8. “To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Quotes About Children

9. “Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”

— Brandon Sanderson

10. “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”

— Brandon Sanderson

11. “This world, it is a tempest sometimes. But remember, the sun always rises again.”

— Brandon Sanderson

12. “If you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll end up miserable.”

— Brandon Sanderson

13. “I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

— Brandon Sanderson

14. “A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.”

— Brandon Sanderson

15. “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?”

— Brandon Sanderson

16. “Control yourself. Become someone who can handle this.”

— Brandon Sanderson

17. “Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don’t know how to read.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Brandon Sanderson

19. “Novels aren’t just happy escapes; they are slivers of people’s souls, nailed to the pages, dripping ink from veins of wood pulp. Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Reading Quotes

20. “It won’t be like that for me,” Kaladin said. “You told me it would get worse.” “It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

22. “Never throw the first punch. If you have to throw the second, try to make sure they don’t get up for a third.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Brandon Sanderson

24. “You could be writing the book that changes your life.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Book Quotes

25. “Better to be the failure who nobly strived than the success who never really had to.”

— Brandon Sanderson

26. “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. Speak again the ancient oaths and return to men the Shards they once bore.”

— Brandon Sanderson

27. “Being polite to a person is not a sign of respect for them. It is merely a sign of a good upbringing and a balanced nature.”

— Brandon Sanderson

28. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

29. “Act with honor, and Honor will aid you.”

— Brandon Sanderson

30. “I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and – if you’re not careful – those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Book Quotes

31. “Sometimes, you have to destroy something in order to build something better.”

— Brandon Sanderson

32. “That’s the point, isn’t it? We have to live on, no matter how hard it gets. We’ll win in the end.”

— Brandon Sanderson

33. “The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.”

— Brandon Sanderson

34. “A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

36. “Faith means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”

— Brandon Sanderson

37. “People see in stories what they’re looking for, my young friend.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

40. “It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn’t want to move around very much.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

41. “Plots behind plots, plans behind plans. There was always another secret.”

— Brandon Sanderson

42. “At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have. For some, this is power. For me, it is peace.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

44. “Journey before destination,” Dalinar said. “It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.”

— Brandon Sanderson

45. “Words are where most change begins.”

— Brandon Sanderson

46. “In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.”

— Brandon Sanderson

47. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

48. “You will find that hate can unify people more quickly and more fervently than devotion ever could.”

— Brandon Sanderson

49. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

50. “I will protect those I hate. Even if the one I hate most is myself.”

— Brandon Sanderson