Matt S > Matt's Quotes

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
― Robert Jordan

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage alone a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.

I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”
“Oh please,” said Locke. “It’ll never happen.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“There’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

“you can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

“Melanie thinks: when your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

“It’s not just Pandora who had that inescapable flaw. It seems like everyone has been built in a way that sometimes makes them do wrong and stupid things.”
― M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

“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

“But how awful would that be? How terrible to live surrounded by the stark, sharp, hollowness of things that simply were enough?”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“This story is for all the slightly broken people out there. I am one of you. You are not alone. You are all beautiful to me.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Elend smiled. "Oh, come on. You have to admit that you're unusual, Vin. You're like some strange mixture of a noblewoman, a street urchin, and a cat. Plus, you've mangaged - in our short three years together - to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiancée. That's kind of like a homicidal hat trick.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“We’ll never survive!”
“Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“You seem a decent fellow," Inigo said. "I hate to kill you."
You seem a decent fellow," answered the man in black. "I hate to die.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Now what happens?" asked the man in black.
"We face each other as God intended," Fezzik said. "No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."
"You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that it?”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son