Top 500 Patrick Rothfuss Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Humor is important for is pacing. If your whole book is just drama drama drama, it’s going to wear down the reader.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

302. “Humor is important. If you’re going to tell any sort of realistic story, you’re going to have to have humor in it, because people are funny. Clever people especially.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

303. “Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

304. “Everything said, you couldn’t hope for a nicer day to have a half dozen ex-soldiers with hunting bows relieve you of everything you owned.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

305. “I’m not a stereotypical professor type. I don’t smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I’m more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

306. “I realized how common this feeling is. I’ve had person after person tell me that they empathize with Auri. That they know where she’s coming from. I didn’t expect that. I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

307. “In my opinion there are two basic questions that any writer tries to answer. “What is?” is the question non-fiction asks. “What if?” is the question fiction asks. That’s the question I’m more interested in.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

308. “Eventually, Bast spoke up. “May I ask a question, Reshi?” Kote smiled gently. “Always, Bast.” “A troublesome question?” “Those tend to be the only worthwhile kind.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

309. “But no. There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

310. “If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today. I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

311. “He drew a slow, deliberate breath before speaking. “Quiet is not stupid,” he said, his voice flat. “You? Always talk. Chek chek chek chek chek.” He made a motion with one hand, like a mouth opening and closing. “Always. Like dog all night barking at tree. Try to be big. No. Just noise. Just dog.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

312. “If you’re going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it’s just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

313. “She’d strayed from the true way of things. First you set yourself to rights. And then your house. And then your corner of the sky. And after that... Well, then she didn’t rightly know what happened next. But she hoped that after that the world would start to run itself a bit, like a gear-watch proper fit and kissed wit oil. That was what she hoped would happen.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

314. “I tend to think too much, Bast. My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right. Even if there was no good explanation for what I did.” He smiled wistfully. “Even if there were very good reasons for me not to do what I did.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

315. “He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

316. “That’s how you know it’s real medicine,” I said. “If it tasted good it would be candy.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

317. “But no. It didn’t suit him. She should have known. He was not a one for fastening. For holding closed. Neither was he dark. Oh no. He was emberant. Incarnadine. He was bright with better bright beneath, like copper-gilded gold.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

318. “Do you just want to get by? Or do you want to make me proud?”

— Patrick Rothfuss

319. “One of them had a large wooden sign nailed to its door proclaiming, NO SYMPATHY! I wondered what non-arcane visitors might think of the warning.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

320. “You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

321. “I brought you a feather with the spring wind in it, but since you were late... ′ she looked a me gravely, ’you get a coin instead.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

322. “In the midst of fear Lyra knelt by Lanre’s body and breathed his name. Her voice was a beckoning. Her voice was love and longing. Her voice called him to live again. But Lanre lay cold and dead.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

323. “You’re right in a way,” he said. “But only an idiot sits in a burning house and thinks everything is fine because fruit is still sweet.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

324. “These poor, rich men who, seeing that you can’t be caught, attempt to buy a thing they know cannot be bought.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

325. “Un hombre no debe ponerle nunca la mano encima a una mujer, salvo por amor.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

326. “You go rummaging around in other people’s lives. You hear rumors and go digging for the painful truth beneath the lovely lies. You believe you have a right to these things. But you don’t.” He looked hard at the scribe. “When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

327. “Tempi reached out and gripped my shoulder firmly. Then he looked up, met my eye, and held it for a brief moment. Such a rarity for him. He gave a small, quiet smile. “Proud,” he said.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

328. “Auri’s heart beat faster then. It had been ages since she’d come on somewhere wholly new. A place that dared to be entirely itself.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

329. “It was too full of love. Nothing could shift it. Nothing could turn it from itself. When all the world was palimpsest, it was a perfect palindrome. Inviolate.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

330. “Todos nos convertimos en lo que pretendemos ser.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

331. “That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

332. “Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

333. “Some things simply were too true to stay. Some merely came to visit for a while.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

334. “Si estad leyendo esto, seguramente estoy muerto.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

335. “Once, I sang colors to a blind man. Seven hours I played, but at the end he said he saw them, green and red and gold.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

336. “So when I meet a woman, I should simply say, ‘You are beautiful?’” Tempi shook his head. “No. You would say simply ‘beautiful,’ and let the woman decide the rest of what you mean.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

337. “Anything you say at this point cannot be trusted. You know I am well and truly angry, so you are in the grip of fear. This means I cannot trust any word you say, as it comes from fear. You are clever, and charming, and a liar. I know you can bend the world with your words. So I will not listen.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

338. “You can’t write good characters if you can’t imagine what it’s like being in another person’s skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people’s lives to be better. You want to make that happen.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

339. “I’m not implying that fantasy is for kids. I’m saying that more and more people are finally realizing that there’s more to fantasy stories than elves and wizards and goblin armies.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

340. “Yes, I cried at the end of it. I did then, and I have every time since. Even a reading of the story aloud will bring tears to my eyes. In my opinion, anyone who isn’t moved by it is less than human inside.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

341. “I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

342. “Each of us has two minds: a waking mind and a sleeping mind. Our waking mind is what thinks and talks and reasons. But the sleeping mind is more powerful. It sees deeply to the heart of things. It is the part of us that dreams. It remembers everything. It gives us intuition. Your waking mind does not understand the nature of names. Your sleeping mind does. It already knows many things that your waking mind does not.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

343. “You see, a laurel needs rain to grow. I can’t do much about that. But I can keep that rain off a few musician’s heads, can’t I?” A sly smile wound its way onto his face. “So God will tend the laurels and keep them wet. And I will tend the players and keep them dry. And wiser minds than mine will decide when to bring the two together.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

344. “There is only one Whedon, and I am his prophet.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

345. “Asking to hold a musician’s instrument is roughly similar to asking to kiss a man’s wife. Nonmusicians don’t understand. An instrument is like a companion and a lover.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

346. “Some places had names. Some places changed, or they were shy about their names. Some places had no names at all, and that was always sad. It was one thing to be private. But to have no name at all? How horrible. How lonely.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

347. “Anyone who thinks boys are innocent and sweet has never been a boy himself, or has forgotten it. And anyone who thinks men aren’t hurtful and cruel at times must not leave his house often.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

348. “It’s not prowess if you watch 5 hours of TV a day. It’s just how you choose to spend your time.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

349. “Character is half the reason we read. We’re excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

350. “I don’t speak fluent bumpkin...”

— Patrick Rothfuss