Top 500 Patrick Rothfuss Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “When you read a fantasy novel part of the fun is getting to explore a new world. Everyone knows that. But I believe the same is true about characters. You can explore interesting people in the same way that you explore a town or a culture.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

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402. “Sentirse solo era terrible.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

403. “She tried to slide it back to proper true, but couldn’t see the shape of it and couldn’t tell the way of things and if it was a place where it was right.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

404. “Most games follow a real railroad plot, no matter what you want, you’re following their storyline to its unavoidable conclusion. I’d like to write a game where your character can follow any number of possible story arcs and sub-plots.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

405. “Etiquette is a set of rules people use so they can be rude to each other in public.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

406. “She laughed so sweet and loud and long it sounded like a bell, a harp, a song.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

407. “A pinned butterfly holds no delight. A pinned butterfly is nothing like a butterfly at all.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

408. “Once I knew what was bothering me, the greater part of my uneasiness left. Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

409. “Some of my Arcanum bunkmates taught me a card game called dogs-breath. I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

410. “You can have an interesting story about a person living an interesting life. And if it’s done well, that is just as engaging as the end of the world. A million people dying – we can’t process. One person, we can process.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

411. “I loved college. I wish I was still taking classes instead of teaching them.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

412. “A troublesome question? Those tend to be the only whorthwhile kind.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

413. “Some days simply lay on you like stones.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

414. “He suggested several unpleasant, unsanitary things I could do to myself at my earliest convenience.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

415. “It’s my belief that you should never show your work to anyone in the publishing world until it shines like a diamond. Rough drafts don’t shine, as a rule. Mine certainly didn’t. That’s why I was rejected for years and years.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

416. “He barely even owned his own name, and even that had been worn thin and threadbare through the years.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

417. “Three circles. Perfect for asking. It was better to be gentle and polite. It was the worst sort of selfishness to force yourself upon the world.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

418. “I’m not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That’s where my strength is.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

419. “To really fear something you have to dwell on it.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

420. “Then, since all my other options seemed to be exhausted, I decided it would be best if I fell off the roof.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

421. “Chronicler picked up his pen, but before he could dip it, Kvothe held up a hand. “Let me say one thing before I start. I’ve told stories in the past, painted pictures with words, told hard lies and harder truths. 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. That, I think, was easier than this. Trying to make you understand her with nothing more than words. You have never seen her, never heard her voice. You cannot know.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

422. “You need to decide what you want for yourself. You want to go home? There’s a price. You want control over your life? There’s a price. You want the freedom to say no? There’s a price. There’s always a price.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

423. “She listened, then opened up the door and looked again. Nothing. But simply seeing did not help. She knew that seeming wasn’t hardly half of things.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

424. “I imagine I could do anything,” I said easily. “If you would ask it of me.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

425. “It might not be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonsense.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

426. “That is how I felt, watching the musicians play. I couldn’t stand it. The everyday lack of my music was like a toothache I had grown used to. I could live with it. But having what I wanted dangled in front of me was more than I could bear.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

427. “Cruelty never helped the turning of the world.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

428. “What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

429. “Soon. She knew. Soon he would come visiting. Incarnadine and sweet and sad and broken. Just like her.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

430. “They had spilled their secrets, and Auri knew full well how heavy hard-held secrets could become.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

431. “Bast looked at him incredulously.“The whole world is burning down,“he said.“Open your eyes.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

432. “In closing, she advised me to drink more water, get some sleep, and suggested that in the future I refrain from strenuous physical activity in a hot room the day after falling off a roof.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

433. “Our language is rich with implication, so it is easier for us to accept the existence of things that cannot be explained. The Lethani is the greatest of these.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

434. “I didn’t really have any idea how I would find her. Some foolish, romantic part of me thought I would know her when I saw her. If she were half as radiant as her voice, she would shine like a candle in a dark room. But as I thought these things, the wiser part of me was whispering in my other ear. Do not hope, it said. Do not dare hold hope that any woman could burn as brightly as the voice that sang the part of Aloine.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

435. “The gesture was so tight with rage she feared she’d snap and crack the world in two.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

436. “After a moment he reached out and brushed the unruly red hair back from his face, like a mother would with a sleeping child. Then he began to sing softly, the tune lilting and strange, almost a lullaby:.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

437. “I hate nothing so much as doing a thing badly.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

438. “My fingers darted, then danced, then flew. I played hard as a hailstorm, like a hammer beating brass. I played soft as sun on autumn wheat, gentle as a single stirring leaf.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

439. “Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn’t be.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

440. “She pulled the cork and sniffed it. “What’s in it?” “Sunlight,” I said. “And a smile, and a question.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

441. “My fear is, what is the larger effect of my book on the world and on the minds of the people who take the time to consume it? Am I contributing in a positive way to the overall kind of collective consciousness of people in the world? I worry about that.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

442. “After a certain point is reached the numbers cease to matter, and all that remains is the faceless mass of a crowd.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

443. “You’d be surprised at the sorts of things hidden away in children’s songs.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

444. “It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste. The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

445. “The night is perfect in a wild way, almost terrifyingly beautiful.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

446. “You need to realize that most writing rules aren’t laws, they’re rules of thumb.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

447. “Do you know what it’s like to run spellcheck for six hours? It’s like a party in purgatory. A party in purgatory where all they have to drink is sugar-free Kool-aid, and the only game to play is Monopoly, and none of your friends show up.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

448. “No matter where you are, people are basically the same. Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

449. “I think the best part of being an author is that I get to learn about anything I want and explain it away as research.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

450. “Quite impressive, to unbind what I have wrought with nothing more than blood.”

— Patrick Rothfuss