Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The motivations of men. They never make sense. And they always make sense.”

— Brandon Sanderson

102. “Death is the destination. But the journey, that is life. That is what matters.”

— Brandon Sanderson

103. “At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different,” Sazed said. “Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”

— Brandon Sanderson

104. “To be human is to seek beauty, Shallan. Do not despair, do not end the hunt because thorns grow in your way.”

— Brandon Sanderson

105. “Remember that your job as a practicing writer is to remember it’s never going to be perfect on your first pass.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

106. “Nothing is eternal, not even time itself.”

— Brandon Sanderson

107. “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

108. “Start writing the things that you are reading or that you want to be published doing.”

— Brandon Sanderson

Featured in: Reading Quotes

109. “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 do that books cannot is interpret.”

— Brandon Sanderson

110. “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

111. “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

112. “Everything’s going to change, Sazed, and I can’t stop it.” Sazed smiled fondly. “Then, Mistress,” he said quietly, “simply enjoy what you have. The future will surprise you, I think.”

— Brandon Sanderson

113. “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

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

116. “Err on the side of awesome.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

123. “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

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

126. “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

127. “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

128. “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

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

— Brandon Sanderson

130. “Journey before destination, you bastard.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

132. “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

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

— Brandon Sanderson

134. “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

135. “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

136. “Don’t complain. Change.”

— Brandon Sanderson

137. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

138. “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

139. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

147. “Some mistakes, though, you can’t fix by being sorry. Can’t fix them, no matter what you do.”

— Brandon Sanderson

148. “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

149. “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

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

— Brandon Sanderson