Elena > Elena's Quotes

“Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“You are not a heretic, Dalinar Kholin. You are a king, a Radiant, and a father. You are a man with complicated beliefs, who does not accept everything you are told. You decide how you are defined. Don’t surrender that to them. They will gleefully take the chance to define you, if you allow it.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“One can believe in a story without believing it happened.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.
But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fail, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.”
“So?” Drehy said.
“Yeah, what are you saying, Kal?” Skar snapped.
“Nothing! I just thought Drehy might empathize….”
“That’s hardly fair,” Drehy said.
“Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is you could say extra manly.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Plan every battle as if you will inevitably retreat, but fight every battle like there is no backing down.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Life was about momentum. Pick a direction and don't let anything—man or storm— turn you aside.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“In my painful experience, the truth may be simple, but it is rarely easy.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Love wasn’t about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partner’s back was bowed.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“As long as you keep trying, there's a chance. When you give up? That's when the dream dies.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Power was an illusion of perception, as Jasnah had said. The first step to being in control was to see yourself as capable of being in control.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Some men, as they age, grow kinder. I am not one of those, for I have seen how the cosmere can mistreat the innocent - and that leaves me disinclined toward kindness. Some men, as they age, grow wiser. I am not one of those, for wisdom and I have always been at cross-purposes, and I have yet to learn the tongue in which she speaks. Some men, as they age, grow more cynical. I, fortunately, am not one of those. If I were, the very air would warp around me, sucking in all emotion, leaving only scorn.
Other men...other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“The most important word a man can say are, "I will do better.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you don’t know.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“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.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Inappropriate?” Pattern said. “Such as … dividing by zero?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Ten spears go to battle," he whispered, "and nine shatter. Did the war forge the one that remained? No, Amaran. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“NO MATING.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.”
― Fiona Apple

“Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, "He fought so hard." And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong.”
― Sally Brampton, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

“I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Some people are just not meant to be in this world. It's just too much for them.”
― Phoebe Stone, The Boy on Cinnamon Street

“I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“It doesn't get better," I said. "The pain. The wounds scab over and you don't always feel like a knife is slashing through you. But when you least expect it, the pain flashes to remind you you'll never be the same.”
― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

“Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.”
― Dorothy M. Neddermeyer

“Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.”
― Kripalvanandji