Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “In the end, I worry that my arrogance shall destroy us all.”

— Brandon Sanderson

152. “The difference between good and evil men is not found in the acts they are willing to commit – but merely in what name they are willing to commit them in.”

— Brandon Sanderson

153. “Even small actions have consequences. And while we can often choose our actions, we rarely get to choose our consequences.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

155. “Love must be allowed to flow both ways – if it is not, then it is not truly love, I think.”

— Brandon Sanderson

156. “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

157. “He hadn’t changed in one giant leap, but across a million little steps.”

— Brandon Sanderson

158. “Your grasp of the language is startling,” Wax said, “considering how you so frequently brutalize it.” “Ain’t nobody what knows the cow better than the butcher, Wax.”

— Brandon Sanderson

159. “As long as you keep trying, there’s a chance. When you give up? That’s when the dream dies.”

— Brandon Sanderson

160. “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

161. “Sometimes we just have to wait long enough, Mistress,” he said. “Then we find out why exactly it was that we kept believing.”

— Brandon Sanderson

162. “I understood in a moment of stillness,′ Litima read. ‘Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate.”

— Brandon Sanderson

163. “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.”

— Brandon Sanderson

164. “Eternity ended ten years ago.”

— Brandon Sanderson

165. “The law is not something holy, son. It’s just a reflection of the ideals of those lucky enough to be in charge.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

167. “I take two hours off for my family every day. And then I write fourteen hours.”

— Brandon Sanderson

168. “However a man who was honest and clever was always, ALWAYS more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever. Sincerity. It was so difficult, by definition, to fake.”

— Brandon Sanderson

169. “I am but a man, Dalinar, so much as I wish it were not true at times. I am no Radiant. And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I want, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.”

— Brandon Sanderson

170. “Hmmmm Light makes shadow. Truth makes lies. Hmmmm.”

— Brandon Sanderson

171. “A hero does not choose her trials. She steps into the darkness, then she faces what comes next.”

— Brandon Sanderson

172. “One can believe in a story without believing it happened.”

— Brandon Sanderson

173. “Sometimes, the answers we need don’t match the questions we’re asking.” He looked up at me. “And sometimes, the coward makes fools of wiser men.”

— Brandon Sanderson

174. “The world ends tomorrow, but the day after that, people are going to ask what’s for breakfast.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

176. “Because people were people, and if there was one thing you could count on, it was that some of them would be weird. Or rather that all of them would be weird when circumstances happened to align with their own individual brand of insanity. That.”

— Brandon Sanderson

177. “Failure is refusing to fight. Failure is remaining quiet and hoping someone else will fix the problem.”

— Brandon Sanderson

178. “You get to choose who you are. Legacy, memories of the past, can serve us well. But we cannot let them define us. When heritage becomes a box instead of an inspiration, it has gone too far.”

— Brandon Sanderson

179. “Joel, lad, school is about learning to learn. If you don’t practice studying things you don’t like, then you’ll have a very hard time in life.”

— Brandon Sanderson

180. “She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier’s coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.”

— Brandon Sanderson

181. “Sometimes, the answers we need don’t match the questions we’re asking.”

— Brandon Sanderson

182. “Impossible things are really rough to do, you know.”

— Brandon Sanderson

183. “My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.”

— Brandon Sanderson

184. “There isn’t much time for a plan. This is more of a hunch with scaffolding.”

— Brandon Sanderson

185. “Those who truly seek wisdom are those who will acknowledge the virtue in their adversaries and who will learn from those who disabuse them of error.”

— Brandon Sanderson

186. “Pity can be a powerful tool. Anytime you can make someone else feel something, you’ve got power over them.”

— Brandon Sanderson

187. “I like words. And I always learn a few new ones when Father gets angry. I shouldn’t neglect my education, now should I?”

— Brandon Sanderson

188. “Joy was more than just an absence of discomfort.”

— Brandon Sanderson

189. “I’ll do what I can, make the decisions as I see they must be made, Elend thought. Then accept the consequences.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

191. “People need stories, child. They bring us hope, and that hope is real.”

— Brandon Sanderson

192. “He felt good lots of days. Trouble was, on the bad days, that was hard to remember. At those times, for some reason, he felt like he had always been in that darkness, and always would be.”

— Brandon Sanderson

193. “He could accept people with failings – even forgive them – but if he glossed over the problems, then they would never change.”

— Brandon Sanderson

194. “The body needs many different foods to remain healthy. And the mind needs many different ideas to remain sharp.”

— Brandon Sanderson

195. “It’s not a lie,” Shallan said, “if everyone understands and knows what it means.” “Mm. Those are some of the best lies.”

— Brandon Sanderson

196. “Personally, I say, “Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them.” However, that one’s having a rough time catching on.”

— Brandon Sanderson

197. “I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don’t write them yet, but I build towards them.”

— Brandon Sanderson

198. “We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us.”

— Brandon Sanderson

199. “Once the soul grows accustomed to the wound, it’s much harder to fix.”

— Brandon Sanderson

200. “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