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“Music explains itself...It is the road and it is the map that shows the road. It is both together.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
― The Wise Man's Fear
“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.
Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
But those people do not understand love, or music, or me.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
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.
Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
But those people do not understand love, or music, or me.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
“She has enough men fawning over her," I said. "They come and go like . . ." I strained to think of an analogy and failed. "I’d rather be her friend."
"You would rather be close to her heart," Wilem said without any particular inflection. "You would rather be joyfully held in the circle of her arms. But you fear she will reject you. You fear she would laugh and you would look the fool." Wilem shrugged easily. "You are hardly the first to feel this way. There is no shame in it."
That struck uncomfortably close to the mark, and for a long moment I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. "I hope," I admitted quietly. "But I don’t want to assume. I’ve seen what happens to the men that assume too much and cling to her.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
"You would rather be close to her heart," Wilem said without any particular inflection. "You would rather be joyfully held in the circle of her arms. But you fear she will reject you. You fear she would laugh and you would look the fool." Wilem shrugged easily. "You are hardly the first to feel this way. There is no shame in it."
That struck uncomfortably close to the mark, and for a long moment I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. "I hope," I admitted quietly. "But I don’t want to assume. I’ve seen what happens to the men that assume too much and cling to her.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
“If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
― The Wise Man's Fear
“My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day.”
― The Wise Man's Fear
― The Wise Man's Fear
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