Brandon Sanderson Quotes

On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power - authority - exists only as it is perceived.

Like slipping on a banana peel around a corner at eighty miles an hour. Piece of cake.

The more faces we wear the more confused they become.

You haven't lost your wits, have you?" Lopen asked, eyeing the bones. "Because if you have, I've got a cousin who makes this drink for people who've lost their wits, and it might make you better, sure." "If I'd lost my wits," Kaladin said, walking over to a pool of still water to wash off the carapace helm, "would I say that I had?" "I don't know," Lopen said, leaning back. "Maybe. Guess it doesn't matter if you're crazy or not." "You'd follow a crazy man into battle?" "Sure," Lopen said. "If you're crazy, you're a good type, and I like you. Not a killing-people-in-their-sleep type of crazy.

Humor is the only thing I've got left. Humor and determination.

Do not look to the executioner for the reason his blade falls. And

To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.

You're still human," Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani's knee. "We can't all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah."

Navani smiled. "She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn't she?

Can a woman not walk with her possessions down the street of a city?

People don't like us, my dear. The idea that someone who can play with their emotions, who can "mystically" get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize - and what you must realize - is that manipulating is at the core of our social interaction. (...) Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing, in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others.

Once we have our atium, we'll be happy."
"Not to mention rich," Ham added.
"The two words are synonyms, Hammond," Breeze said.

The immortal demigod took a throaty slurp of her beer, then slammed the mug down onto the table, grinning like a four-year-old who had been paid in cookies to rat out her sister.

Nobody will think I'm weird, and I won't get into trouble for fighting because my job will be fighting. They won't call me names, and everyone will love me.

Like it or not, you are a part of the workings of this kingdom - and you produce effects even if you stay in bed. If you do nothing, then the problems are as much your fault as if you had instigated them.

If men should read these words, let them know that power is a heavy burden. Seek not to be bound by its chains.

Has no one done my son a service and assassinated you yet?" "No assassins yet," Wit said, amused. "I guess I've already got too much ass sass of my own." ... "Oh really, Wit" she said. "I thought that kind of humour was beneath you." "So are you technically," Wit said, smiling, from atop his high-legged stool.

The Words, Kaladin. That was Syl's voice. You have to speak the Words!

I FORBID THIS.

YOUR WILL MATTERS NOT! Syl shouted. YOU CANNOT HOLD ME BACK IF HE SPEAKS THE WORDS! THE WORDS, KALADIN! SAY THEM!

"I will protect even those I hate," Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. "So long as it is right."

A Shardblade appeared in Moash's hands.

A distant rumbling. Thunder.

THE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED, the Stormfather said reluctantly.

"Kaladin!" Syl's voice. "Stretch forth thy hand!" She zipped around him, suddenly visible as a ribbon of light.

"I can't…" Kaladin said, drained.

"Stretch forth thy hand!"

He reached out a trembling hand. Moash hesitated.

Wind blew in the opening in the wall, and Syl's ribbon of light became mist, a form she often took. Silver mist, which grew larger, coalesced before Kaladin, extending into his hand.

Glowing, brilliant, a Shardblade emerged from the mist, vivid blue light shining from swirling patterns along its length.

Kaladin gasped a deep breath as if coming fully awake for the first time. The entire hallway went black as the Stormlight in every lamp down the length of the hall winked out.

For a moment, they stood in darkness.

Then Kaladin exploded with Light.

It erupted from his body, making him shine like a blazing white sun in the darkness. Moash backed away, face pale in the

What if they take you captive?" Goradel asked.
"My dear man," Breeze said, leaning forward to look out at Goradel. "That's why kings send ambassadors. This way, if someone gets captured, the king is still safe. We, my friend, are something Elend can never be: expendable."
Goradel frowned at that. "I don't feel very expendable.

Have you no thoughts on the matter?" Blushweaver finally asked.
"I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and-if you're not careful-those lead to actions.
Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book."
Blushweaver sighed. "You avoid thinking, you avoid me, you avoid effort ... is there anything you don't
avoid?"
"Breakfast.

Seen like that, he was just a shadow; darkness, a nothingness, before real power. The men of this world, epics included, would pass from time. I might be a worm to him, but he was a worm himself in the grand scheme of the universe.

If nobody asked questions, then we would never learn anything.

Don't complain. Change.

Manipulation works so well on a personal level, I don't see why it wouldn't be an equally viable national policy." "That's actually how most rulership works," Ham mused. "What is a governement but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work?

Sometimes, son," my father said, prying my fingers free, "you have to help the heroes along.

Scared to go onward," Kaladin said, "but terrified to go back to what you were.

Yes, we saw from above," Elhokar said. "Perhaps a few of us could ride ahead. ... " "Your Majesty," Dalinar said. "The point of bringing my troops along would be somewhat undermined if you left them behind." Elhokar rolled his eyes. Dalinar did not yield, his expression as immobile as the rocks around them.

Looking back on her recent life, she felt frustrated at her frequent helplessness. And that felt like part of whom she really was. The woman who would do anything to be sure she wasn't helpless. That was why she'd studied so hard with the tutors in Idris. That was also why she wanted to learn how to Awaken. She

All of the best motives boiled down to a single, driving emotion.

They're too beaten down - they don't have the will or the hope to resist. That

Steris," he whispered, "I've been considering how to proceed once we decide how to infiltrate. I've thought about bringing you in with us, and I just don't see that it's feasible. I think it would be best if you stayed and watched the horses."
"Very well."
"No, really. Those are armed soldiers. I can't even fathom how I'd feel if I brought you in there and something happened. You need to stay out here."
"Very well."
"It isn't subject to - " Wax hesitated. "Wait. You're all right with this?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "I barely have any sense of where to point a gun, and have hardly any capacity for sneaking - that's really quite a scandalous talent if you think about it, Lord Waxillium. While I do believe that people tend to be safest when near you, riding into an enemy compound is stretching the issue. I'll stay here."
Wax grinned in the darkness. "Steris, you're a gem."
"What? Because I have a moderately healthy sense of self-preservation?"
"Let's just say that out in the Roughs, I was accustomed to people always wanting to try things beyond their capacity. And they always seemed determined to do it right when it was the most dangerous."
"Well, I shall endeavor to stay out of sight," Steris said, "and not get captured."
"I doubt you need to worry about that all the way out here."
"Oh, I agree," she said. "But that is the sort of statistical anomaly that plagues my life, so I'll plan for it nonetheless.

You will be surprised how much more profitable an independent man is than a slave who thinks of nothing more than his next meal.

Ignorance may reside in a man hiding from intelligence, but scholarship can seem ignorance hidden behind intelligence.

Doesn't matter how good your bullets are if you don't aim carefully.

a chin that could destroy small countries if it fell into the wrong hands.

Sometimes Vin imagined she was like the ash, or the wind, or the mist itself. A thing without thought, capable of simply being, not thinking, caring, or hurting. Then she could be ... free.

And are you going to explain why you consider competing with me to be the most sincere form of compliment?"
"Of course I am," Lightsong said. "My dear, have you ever known me to make an inflammatorily ridiculous statement without providing an equally ridiculous explanation to substantiate it?"
"Of course not," she agreed. "You are nothing if not exhaustive in your self-congratulatory made-up logic."
"I am rather exceptional in that regard.

In fact, the entire nature of this State seemed to highlight that political power was just an illusion provided to engage and excite us

The study's small ventilation window bumped open, and Vin squeezed through, pulling in a puff of mist behind her. She closed the window, then surveyed the room.

"More?" she asked incredulously. "You found more books?"

"Of course," Elend said.

"How many of those things have people written?" she asked with exasperation.

A child's instincts are often the most honest.

The finest defense of character is correct action. Acquaint yourself with virtue, and you can expect proper treatment from those around you.

Religions are promises
promises that there is something watching over us, guiding us.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going mad. Perhaps it is due to the pressure of knowing that I must somehow bear the burden of an entire world. Perhaps it is caused by the death I have seen, the friends I have lost. The friends I have been forced to kill.

I will not stop vibrating. The wind will not stop blowing. You will not stop drawing.

For a second," Megan added, "I thought you were going to be forced into the bathroom there with me. Too bad. It would have been amusing to watch you squirm.

It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.

What is the good of faith if this is the result? A city full of people misinterpreting their god's commands? A world of ash and pain and death and sorrow?

A woman could be strong without having the emotions of a brick.

He'd never been an optimist. He saw the world as it was, or he tried to. That was a problem, though, when the truth he saw was so terrible.

A book lives a new life every time it is read.

You're late, Kell", Dockson said, still not looking up from his ledgers.
"I strive for nothing if not consistency" - Kelsier

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

It frightens me," Shallan said, "because we all see the world by some kind of light personal to us, and that light changes perception. I don't see clearly. I want to, but I don't know if I ever truly can.

As he walked, he moved with more determination. If only because he knew there were things in the world he didn't understand - and that meant, perhaps, there were possibilities he didn't see. Possibilities for survival.

Not that he was a fool. No, the book was full of insight. Disturbing insight. The Lord Mistborn advocated gathering the Metalborn who were elderly or terminally ill, then asking them to sacrifice themselves to make these ... spikes, which could in turn be used to create individuals of great power.

I thought I knew you," she snapped. "I thought you were a good man, down deep"
Cett shook his head. "The good men are all dead, Allrianne. They died inside that city.

Of all the recruits in his cohort, he had learned the quickest. How to hold the spear, how to stand to
spar. He'd done it almost without instruction. That had shocked Tukks. But why should it have? You
were not shocked when a child knew how to breathe. You were not shocked when a skyeel took flight
for the first time. You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he
knows how to use it.

She had to stop judging people. But was that possible? Wasn't interaction based, in part, on judgments? A person's background and attitudes influenced how she responded to them.

It was so hard to find warmth in the darkness. But when the night grew cold and the darkness came for you, that was when you needed to light a fire.
And make your own light.

During the early days following the Catacendre, refugees from Terris had written down memories of their homeland, as no Keepers had remained.

He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn't beaten.

Don't you see, boy? This is why you shouldn't be king. Leave the job to men who understand their own corruption; don't let it destroy you.

The kiss was yours, Dalinar,' she said idly, pulling open the door and entering his antechamber.
'You seduced me to it.'
'What? Seduced?' She glanced back at him. 'Dalinar, I've never been more open and honest in my life.'
'I know,' Dalinar said, smiling. 'That was the seductive part.

I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions "moral" after a fashion.
Perhaps another person, reading of my life, would name me a religious tyrant. He could call me arrogant. What is to make that man's opinion any less valid than my own?
I guess it all comes down to one fact: In the end, I'm the one with the armies.

That smile forced back the gloom, made the aches and soreness fade. Kaladin's father had described that kind of smile. Those smiles weren't why Lirin had become a surgeon, but they were why he'd remained one.

Why did it seem that the more he demonstrated himself to be an idiot, the more convinced people became that he had some kind of hidden depths?

It is beautiful because it could have been. It should have been.

Oh, I'm just a happy person.

Most people are surprised to hear how they really sound, as the American media uses the call of the red-tailed hawk when showing an eagle. They don't think the eagle sounds regal enough. And so we lie to ourselves about the very identity of our national icon ...

[ ... ] What's wrong with her?"
"Chronic competence, I should guess. She's been so successful in life that she has unrealistic expectations of others.

It might be religion, but it still has to make sense.

Oh, hell," Kelsier said. "There's actually a God?"
"Yes."
Kelsier decked him.
It was a good, clean punch, thrown from the shoulder while he brought his other arm up to block a counter strike.

Well, I didn't wanna kill someone in cold blood - " "That's good, I suppose." " - but there weren't no fire around to light her with first.

Cadsuane, do you believe that I could kill you? Right here, right now, without using a sword or the Power? Do you believe that if I simply willed it, the Pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? By . . . coincidence?

Allomancy wasn't just about fighting and killing. It was about skill and grace. It was something beautiful.

God is the creator of all things, right? He is the force that dictates the laws of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. He is absolute morality ...
We claim to be doing good. But the Lord Ruler - as God - defines what is good. So by opposing him we're actually evil. But since he's doing the wrong thing, does evil actually count as good in this case?

Well, Vin says that there's something behind all this, right? Some evil force of doom or whatever? Well, if I were said force of doom, then I certainly wouldn't have used my powers to turn the land black. It just lacks flair. Red. Now, that would be an interesting color. Think of the possibilities
if the ash were red, the rivers would run like blood. Black is so monotonous that you can forget about it, but red
you'd always be thinking, 'Why, look at that. That hill is red. That evil force of doom trying to destroy me certainly has style.

The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had finally begun to put forth buds.
The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
But it was an ending.

Epics have this habit of treating physics like something that happens to other people, like acne and debt.

Wayne: You wanna know why I really came to find you?
Waxilliam: Why?
Wayne: I thought of you happy in a comfy bed, resting and relaxing, spending the rest of your life sipping tea and reading papers while people bring you food and maids rub your toes and stuff.
Waxilliam: And?
Wayne: And I just couldn't leave you to a fate like that ... I'm too good a friend to let a mate of mine die in such a terrible situation.
Waxilliam: Comfortable?
Wayne: No. Boring.

How . . ." Dalinar said. "You fell into a chasm!"
"I fell face-first, sir," Kaladin said, "and fortunately, I'm particularly hard-headed.

Suddenly, Vin grew pale. Elend paused, glancing at her, sensing that something was wrong. Not with what he'd said, something else. What is it? Assassins? Mist spirits? Koloss?
"I just realized something," Vin said, looking at him with those intense eyes of hers. "I can't go to a ball - I didn't bring a gown!

Troublemaking is just about the only thing I'm good at

That was not a glare. That was a dignified look of measured contempt.

My life wasn't just about one city, or one Epic, anymore. It was about a war. It was about finding a way to stop the Epics.
Permanently.

The most important step a person can take is always the next one.

Logically the bright side is the only side you can look on, because the other side is dark

It was as if he were as comfortable when sitting properly as other people were when lounging.

Never ask of your men a sacrifice you wouldn't make yourself. Never make them fight in conditions you would refuse to fight in yourself. Never ask a man to perform an act you wouldn't soil your own hands doing.

The Nelazan believed that there was beauty in darkness, and that the daylight was more profane. They saw the stars as the Thousand Eyes of Trell watching them. The sun was the single, jealous eye of Trell's brother, Nalt. Since Nalt only had one eye, he made it blaze brightly to outshine his brother. The Nelazan, however, were not impressed, and preferred to worship the quiet Trell, who watched over them even when Nalt obscured the sky.

I was coming to realize something very difficult. I was slowly accepting that the way I did things – the way my people did things – might not actually be the best way.
In other words, I was feeling humility.
I sincerely hope that you never have to feel this emotion. Like asparagus and fish, it's not really as good for you as everyone says it is. Selfishness, arrogance, and callousness got me much further than humility ever did

I couldn't help grinning at the sight of her. Megan, in turn, raised a nine-millimeter square at my chest.
Well, that was familiar, at least.

You want too much of me" he snapped at her as he reached the other side of the chasm. "I'm not some glorious knight of ancient days. I'm a broken man. Do you hear me Syl? I'm broken."

She zipped up to him and whispered "That's what they all were, silly.

Keep forgetting that y'all are freakishly informed about this stuff.

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.

You have quite the clever tongue on you!"
"I've never actually had someone's tongue on me," Shallan said, turning a page and not looking up, "clever or not. I'd hazard to consider it an unpleasant experience."
"It ain't so bad," Gaz said.

A little fear, a little history, those things don't mean anything. Only what we do means anything.

Here, in Alethkar, men often spoke of the legends
of mankind's hard-won victory over the Voidbringers. But when weapons created to fight nightmares were turned against common soldiers, the lives of men became cheap things indeed.

They say they give their women more freedom, but there's still the impression that the freedom was theirs to 'give' in the first place.

Stupid water, ruining my enjoyment of swimming.

So, uh," I said, shuffling from one foot to the other, "want to go with me to check up on Obliteration? If you're not doing anything else important, I mean."
She cocked her head. "Did you just invite me on a date ... to spy on a deadly Epic planning to destroy the city?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of experience with dating, but I've always heard you're supposed to pick something you know the girl will enjoy ... "
She smiled. "Well, let's get to it then.