Top 500 Brandon Sanderson Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “The God King’s superiority was arbitrary, much like Lightsong’s divinity – both part of a grand game of make-believe. But he’d found that imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people’s lives.”

— Brandon Sanderson

402. “Brightness Markal! What a disaster that hairstyle is; how brave of you to show it to the world.”

— Brandon Sanderson

403. “To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of one’s body against oneself.”

— Brandon Sanderson

404. “Visit?” Yeden asked uncomfortably. “You’re going to visit the Lord Ruler? Are you insa... ” Yeden trailed off, then glanced at the rest of the room. “Right. I forgot.”

— Brandon Sanderson

405. “I think I would feel more comfortable in this city,” she said, “if I didn’t know that our Mistborn had the volatile emotions of a teenage girl.”

— Brandon Sanderson

406. “There were books involved.”

— Brandon Sanderson

407. “Kelsier glanced down at his hands and forearms. They still burned sometimes, though he was certain the pain was only in his mind. He looked up at Mennis and smiled. “You ask why I smile, Goodman Mennis? Well, the Lord Ruler thinks he has claimed laughter and joy for himself. I’m disinclined to let him do so. This is one battle that doesn’t take very much effort to fight.”

— Brandon Sanderson

408. “What would they think if they knew that their champion – the Hero of Ages, their savior – doubted himself? Perhaps they wouldn’t be shocked at all. In a way, this is what worries me most. Maybe, in their hearts, they wonder – just as I do. When they see me, do they see a liar?”

— Brandon Sanderson

409. “Kelsier smiled. Gods, it appeared, could still fall for a classic misdirection con.”

— Brandon Sanderson

410. “There are no good men, Bleeder said. Choice is an illusion, lawman. There are those created to be selfish and there are those created to be selfless. This does not make them good or evil, any more than the ravaging lion is evil when compared to the placid rabbit.”

— Brandon Sanderson

411. “We may not be the ones to kill Steelheart. But even if we fail, we might be the cause of his death. Someday.”

— Brandon Sanderson

412. “You didn’t promise to kill me,” Wayne said, pulling on his socks. “You promised to have killed me. That there be the present perfect tense.”

— Brandon Sanderson

413. “My outlines are always very goal-based. What do I want to have happen by the ending and how can I earn that.”

— Brandon Sanderson

414. “I need you to stick your head in a bucket of water and slowly count to a thousand!”

— Brandon Sanderson

415. “Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can’t create energy; we can only harness it. We can’t create matter; we can only shape it. We can’t even create life; we can only nurture it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

416. “He ate my horse.”

— Brandon Sanderson

417. “Blushweaver sighed. “You avoid thinking, you avoid me, you avoid effort... is there anything you don’t avoid?” “Breakfast.”

— Brandon Sanderson

418. “Normally, I have a lot of alpha readers on my books. These are people that, once I finish a novel, I let them look at it and give me a reader response.”

— Brandon Sanderson

419. “Kelsier watched after him, then did the only rational thing. He ate the bolt he’d taken from the bottom of the stool.”

— Brandon Sanderson

420. “You have to learn when to care. And when to let go. You’ll grow calluses.”

— Brandon Sanderson

421. “I know that many women who read this will see it only as further proof that I am the godless heretic everyone claims. – From Oathbringer, preface.”

— Brandon Sanderson

422. “The entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don’t you know anything about basic economics?”

— Brandon Sanderson

423. “I love to do what I do. So, I do work long hours.”

— Brandon Sanderson

424. “If you are anything like me – Clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome – then you have undoubtedly read many books.”

— Brandon Sanderson

425. “I’m mysterious,” Kaladin said. “I used to think you were. Then I found out you don’t like good puns – it’s truly possible to know too much about somebody.”

— Brandon Sanderson

426. “The best performances, are those that can be performed once.”

— Brandon Sanderson

427. “But he’d found that imaginary things were often the only items of real substance in people’s lives.”

— Brandon Sanderson

428. “Since nothing I can say would be able to pierce your delusions, let the fact that I make no arguments stand as ultimate proof that I am right. As Plato once said that his friend Socrates once said, “I know that I’m right because I’m the only person humble enough to admit that I’m not.” Or something like that. I.”

— Brandon Sanderson

429. “I seek the truth,” Shallan said. “Wherever it may be, whoever may hold it. That’s who I am.”

— Brandon Sanderson

430. “Scared to go onward, but terrified to go back to what you were.”

— Brandon Sanderson

431. “Remember why we live. Remember warmth, remember good food. Remember friends, and song, and evenings spent around the hearth.”

— Brandon Sanderson

432. “Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly.”

— Brandon Sanderson

433. “The prophecies are not literal, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “They’re metaphors – expressions of hope. Or, at least, that is how I have always seen them. Perhaps your Terris prophecies are the same? Expressions of a belief that if the people were in danger, their gods would send a Hero to protect them? In this case, the vagueness would be intentional – and rational. The prophecies were never meant to mean something specific, but more to speak of a general feeling. A general hope.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

435. “I am a stick,′ he said. He sounded satisfied.”

— Brandon Sanderson

436. “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

437. “Vin didn’t consider herself to be either self-assured or self-motivated. Still, she saw no point in asking why. Life had taught her that sometimes things simply happened.”

— Brandon Sanderson

438. “Sparks. Good metaphor. Walking on crumpled tinfoil. I’d have to remember that one.”

— Brandon Sanderson

439. “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

440. “Ham shook his head, sitting down, pouring himself something to drink. “I don’t get it, El. Why’d she attack him?” “She’s loony,” Spook said.”

— Brandon Sanderson

441. “It had been like discovering that Santa Claus was secretly a Nazi.”

— Brandon Sanderson

442. “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

443. “You watch yourself,” I said, wishing I had something to stand on to bring my eyes level with his. “When you are broken and mourning your fall from grace, I will consume your shadow in my own, and laugh at your misery.”

— Brandon Sanderson

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

— Brandon Sanderson

445. “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

446. “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

447. “All people are musicians” Wit countered. “The question is whether or not they share their songs.”

— Brandon Sanderson

448. “I see only one woman here. The one who is standing up.”

— Brandon Sanderson

449. “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

450. “At his neck, hanging outside his clothing, Demoux wore a necklace that bore a small silver spear: the increasingly popular symbol of the Church of the Survivor. It seemed odd to her that the weapon that killed Kelsier would become the symbol of his followers.”

— Brandon Sanderson