Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Do not dash if you only have the strength to walk, and do not waste your time pushing on the walls that will not give. More importantly, don’t shove where a pat would be sufficient.”

— Brandon Sanderson

102. “Small things were important. Secods were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.”

— Brandon Sanderson

103. “We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.”

— Brandon Sanderson

104. “I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.”

— Brandon Sanderson

105. “Money is behind every war,” Au-nak continued. “Religion is but an excuse. Or perhaps a justification.”

— Brandon Sanderson

106. “So yes, I, Adolin Kholin – cousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedom – have shat myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.”

— Brandon Sanderson

107. “Err on the side of awesome.”

— Brandon Sanderson

108. “A river is easier to channel than to stop.”

— Brandon Sanderson

109. “But, what is money? A physical representation of the abstract concept of effort.”

— Brandon Sanderson

110. “If you could explain something perfectly, then you’d never need art.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

113. “Pain lost its power when other things became more important.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

115. “Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone.”

— Brandon Sanderson

116. “It’s like a banana farm for guns!”

— Brandon Sanderson

117. “Life was so much harder, but potentially so much more fulfilling, when you found the courage to choose.”

— Brandon Sanderson

118. “The definition of a lawman, Uncle, is easy,” Wax said, feeling blood from a dozen cuts trickle down his face. He lifted Suit by the front of his clothing, bringing him close. “He’s the man who takes the bullet so nobody else has to.”

— Brandon Sanderson

119. “Cruelty is only for men, as is mercy. Only we can choose one or the other, and beasts cannot.”

— Brandon Sanderson

120. “Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.”

— Brandon Sanderson

121. “Every moment in our lives seems trivial,” Zahel said. “Most are forgotten while some, equally humble, become the points upon which history pivots.”

— Brandon Sanderson

122. “Men rarely see their own actions as unjustified.”

— Brandon Sanderson

123. “This is going to take a while. I’m a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.”

— Brandon Sanderson

124. “It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority-even oppressive authority-for it was less painful for them than uncertainty.”

— Brandon Sanderson

125. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

126. “Llarimar had told him to do his best. That sounded like an awful lot of work. Unfortunately, doing nothing was beginning to seem like even MORE work.”

— Brandon Sanderson

127. “Don’t complain. Change.”

— Brandon Sanderson

128. “It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of their books.”

— Brandon Sanderson

129. “But things can’t stay the same – and that’s well, for when nothing changes in your life, it’s as good as being dead.”

— Brandon Sanderson

130. “The number 1 thing that I don’t want to see in a story is when characters exist simply to be proven wrong.”

— Brandon Sanderson

131. “You’ll never learn how to do your endings until you FINISH your endings.”

— Brandon Sanderson

132. “We lift the bridge together, Teft,” Kaladin said. “And we carry it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

133. “A thing of nature. For every Push, there is a Pull. A consequence.”

— Brandon Sanderson

134. “Love wasn’t about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partner’s back was bowed.”

— Brandon Sanderson

135. “I Write those words in steel for anything else not set in metal cannot be trusted.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

137. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

138. “That’s what trust is. It’s about giving someone else power over you. Power to hurt you.”

— Brandon Sanderson

139. “The foolishness of men who care, Dalinar,” Wit said. “And the brilliance of those who do not. The second depend on the first – but also exploit the first – while the first misunderstand the second, hoping that the second are more like the first. And all of their games steal our time. Second by second.”

— Brandon Sanderson

140. “People need stories, child. They bring us hope, and that hope is real. If that’s the case, what does it matter whether people in them actually lived?”

— Brandon Sanderson

141. “Spook, child. You want to be like me? Really like me? Then fight when you are beaten!”

— Brandon Sanderson

142. “Brother. ‘You must find the most important words a man can say.”

— Brandon Sanderson

143. “Plan every battle as if you will inevitably retreat, but fight every battle like there is no backing down.”

— Brandon Sanderson

144. “When I write my books, actually, I’m known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.”

— Brandon Sanderson

145. “Navani Kholin was not some timid, perfect ideal. She was a sour storm of a woman, set in her ways, stubborn as a boulder rolling down a mountain, and increasingly impatient with things she considered foolish. He loved her the most for that.”

— Brandon Sanderson

146. “If nobody asked questions, then we would never learn anything.”

— Brandon Sanderson

147. “Vin: I don’t know – and it’s all your fault, you know. I used to understand everything. Now it’s all confused. Kelsier: Yes, we’ve messed you up right properly.”

— Brandon Sanderson

148. “If the journey itself is indeed the most important piece, rather than the destination itself, then I traveled not to avoid duty – but to seek it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

149. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

150. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson