Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Why, Elend! That’s almost romantic – in a twisted ‘I’m going to make my wife want to kill me’ sort of way.”

— Brandon Sanderson

452. “If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, then ask yourself this: would any decent, kind-hearted individual become a writer? Of course not.”

— Brandon Sanderson

453. “Be slow to trust a man with clothing that was too new. You didn’t get to wear new, clean clothing by doing honest work.”

— Brandon Sanderson

454. “Elend smiled, recognizing the reference. Trentison’s Supplying in Scale. A few years earlier, he would have agreed with Yomen, and the two would probably have spent the afternoon discussing the philosophy of leadership in Yomen’s palace. However, Elend had learned things in the last few years that he simply hadn’t been able to get form his studies.”

— Brandon Sanderson

455. “Sometimes it was daunting, knowing how easily I could break things. This one simple curse seemed to dominate my entire life.”

— Brandon Sanderson

456. “No mating,” Pattern buzzed softly on the wall.”

— Brandon Sanderson

457. “To be of use in even a single burst of flame and sound is worth more than a lifetime of achieving nothing.”

— Brandon Sanderson

458. “Are there any religions on your list that include the slaughter of noblemen as a holy duty?”

— Brandon Sanderson

459. “Spensa, I hear no more footfalls. Have you temporary stopped being bipedal?”

— Brandon Sanderson

460. “Some important decisions were made on a battlefield or in a conference room. But others happened quietly, unseen by others. That didn’t make the decision any less important to Sazed. He would believe. Not because something had been proven to him beyond his ability to deny. But because he chose to.”

— Brandon Sanderson

461. “Life was a tempest, whether you were a milkmaid or a queen. The queens were simply better at projecting control in the middle of that storm.”

— Brandon Sanderson

462. “How easy it was to ignore a blackened heart if you dressed it in a pressed uniform and a reputation for honesty.”

— Brandon Sanderson

463. “I hadn’t been a nerd, mind you. I’d just been the type of guy who spent a lot of time by himself, focused entirely on a single consuming interest.”

— Brandon Sanderson

464. “War is far worse. At least where politics is going on, there are usually nice hors d’oeuvres.”

— Brandon Sanderson

465. “A man is what he has a passion about,” Breeze said. ‘I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.”

— Brandon Sanderson

466. “Spook: No, I’m not troubled. In fact, I actually think everything is going to be all right. Finally.”

— Brandon Sanderson

467. “In her business, there were many who laughed at honest men, calling them easy pickings. That was a fallacy. Being honest did not make one naive. A dishonest fool and an honest fool were equally easy to scam; you just went about it in different ways. However, a man who was honest and clever was always, always more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever.”

— Brandon Sanderson

468. “He was rambling. But, oddly, his mind felt clearer now than it had in weeks. Perhaps it was the clarity of perspective. Most men spent their entire lives wondering about the future. Well, his future was empty now.”

— Brandon Sanderson

469. “Is human nature to believe that other places and other times are better than the here and now.”

— Brandon Sanderson

470. “What if everybody is frightened, and nobody has the answers?”

— Brandon Sanderson

471. “Larsta love oath is binding. They knew no form of divorce in their culture.”

— Brandon Sanderson

472. “They are presented attractively for the same reason that kittens are cute – so that they can draw you in, then pounce on you for the kill. Seriously. Stay away from kittens.”

— Brandon Sanderson

473. “Your hallucination has hallucinations.” “Yes.”

— Brandon Sanderson

474. “Well, I didn’t wanna kill someone in cold blood – ” “That’s good, I suppose.” “ – but there weren’t no fire around to light her with first.”

— Brandon Sanderson

475. “When Simol was informed of the arrival of the Edgedancers, a concealed consternation and terror, as is common in such cases, fell upon him; although they were not the most demanding of orders, their graceful, limber movements hid a deadliness that was, by this time, quite renowned; also, they were the most articulate and refined of the Radiants.”

— Brandon Sanderson

476. “If there was one thing in particular that he had learned by growing up in his father’s house it was this: how to annoy people.”

— Brandon Sanderson

477. “They claimed that each person was born with a certain finite amount of ill luck. And so, when an unfortunate event happened, they thought themselves blessed – thereafter, their lives could only get better.”

— Brandon Sanderson

478. “All things exist in three Realms, Gaotona. Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul – its essence – as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

479. “That’s exactly the problem. Everyone’s convinced that their lives are over just because their hearts stopped beating.” “That’s usually a pretty good indication, sule,” Galladon said dryly.”

— Brandon Sanderson

480. “It’s always a dangerous thing for a writer to resurrect a character. It threatens to undermine the consequences in a story, and minimizes the risks characters take.”

— Brandon Sanderson

481. “The look of disbelief that ran across the boy’s face was somehow more disturbing than the despair it had replaced. This creature had given up hope long ago; he probably begged out of habit rather than expectation.”

— Brandon Sanderson

482. “The man had come looking for a magical solution to his woes, but he had found an answer much more simple. Pain lost its power when other things became more important.”

— Brandon Sanderson

483. “Yes. You read that right. Evil Librarians control the world. They keep everyone in ignorance, teaching them falsehoods in place of history, geography, and politics. It’s kind of a joke to them. Why else do you think the Librarians named themselves what they did? Librarians. LIE-brarians. Sounds obvious now, doesn’t it? If you wish to smack yourself in the forehead and curse loudly, you may proceed to do so. I can wait.”

— Brandon Sanderson

484. “The Librarians control the information... They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned. Because of that they have power.”

— Brandon Sanderson

485. “What is fact? What records did the church, in its misguided attempt to cleanse the past of perceived contradictions, rewrite to suit its preferred narrative?”

— Brandon Sanderson

486. “You see, the great thing about madness is that it’s all in your head.”

— Brandon Sanderson

487. “You don’t fly, you fall the wrong way.”

— Brandon Sanderson

488. “Which was more potent? The pain of memory, or the pain of forgetting? He.”

— Brandon Sanderson

489. “Metal. It was the key to everything.”

— Brandon Sanderson

490. “Claim the Stars.”

— Brandon Sanderson

491. “The world’s gone mad: joining it is the only solution.”

— Brandon Sanderson

492. “Oh,” Obliteration continued, “I think that you’ll find a man can do many things thought impossible, if he tries hard enough.”

— Brandon Sanderson

493. “Bravery isn’t about what people call you, Spensa. It’s about who you know yourself to be.”

— Brandon Sanderson

494. “Unfortunately, Alanik, the game takes no care for your interest. It plays you either way.”

— Brandon Sanderson

495. “Standing out like a punk guitarist in a mariachi band.”

— Brandon Sanderson

496. “Can’t be any harder than sitting here and having a staring contest with mortality.”

— Brandon Sanderson

497. “Oh, I’m not objecting, I’d let a confused dishwasher marry us.”

— Brandon Sanderson

498. “If that loss brings learning.”

— Brandon Sanderson

499. “Those people gave in to their pain because they couldn’t find purpose – their torture was meaningless, and when you can’t find reason in life, you tend to give up on it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

500. “You trusted me enough to jump off the wall, and I caught you.”

— Brandon Sanderson