This is not a systematic compilation of wisdom or a comprehensive collection of truths. It's a shelf of lines that stuck.
Some for their beauty, others for their insight, or the way they quietly rearranged my thinking.
"It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most."
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
"Total perspective is an optical illusion."
— Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
"The poet runs untrammeled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles."
— R.F. Kuang, Babel
"Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket.
But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect."
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
"You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me."
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
"The book, the painting, the film script is not the only art. It's important, but in a way it's a receipt. It's a diploma. The book you write, the painting you create, the music you compose is important and artistic, but it is also a mark of proof that you have done the work to learn, because in the end of it all you are the art. "
— Brandon Sanderson, What It Means To Be Human
"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, The Slow Regard of Silent Things
"She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood."
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things