Top 500 Patrick Rothfuss Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Fiction Quotes, Wise Quotes, Clever Quotes

2. “Practice makes the master.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Preparation Quotes, Practice Quotes, Mastery Quotes, Quotes About Skills

3. “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Focus On Yourself Quotes, Be Yourself Quotes, Storytelling Quotes, Healing Quotes

4. “It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Curiosity Quotes

5. “Only a fool worries over what he can’t control.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

6. “It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

7. “There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

8. “Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

9. “If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

10. “The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

11. “Feel free to call me by my first name: Master.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

12. “Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

13. “Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

14. “Anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

15. “Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

16. “Small facts lead to great knowing.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

17. “Dawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

18. “Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness. That is why owls make poor heroes.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

19. “You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

20. “One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that’s lacking in our regular lives.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

21. “All the truth in the world is held in stories.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

22. “You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

23. “Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

24. “The desire for knowledge shapes a man.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

25. “It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

26. “He was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn’t realize that once a noose is tied it will fit one neck as easily as another.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

27. “I’ve always liked the moonless night best. It’s easier to say things in the dark. It’s easier to be yourself.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

28. “It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

29. “Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

30. “The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Quotes About Childhood

31. “My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I’m paying for it.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

32. “But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. This is rare and pure and perfect.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

33. “The best lies about me are the ones I told.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

34. “Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

35. “Metal rusts, music lasts forever.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

36. “I guess I’m destined to be loveless.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

37. “We all become what we pretend to be.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

38. “Only priests and fools are fearless and I’ve never been on the best of terms with God.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

39. “We are more than the parts that form us.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

40. “A tree doesn’t make a thunderstorm, but any fool knows where lightning’s going to strike.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

41. “Just handle the books gently and you’ll get along fine.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

Featured in: Reading Quotes

42. “Congratulations. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

43. “There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other is to lend.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

44. “If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

45. “Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

46. “But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?”

— Patrick Rothfuss

47. “If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

48. “Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woefully small targets.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

49. “You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

50. “Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart’s yearning.”

— Patrick Rothfuss