“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”
― The Name of the Wind
― The Name of the Wind
“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”
― The Name of the Wind
― The Name of the Wind
“The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.”
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“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”
― Assassin's Apprentice
― Assassin's Apprentice
“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”
― Assassin's Apprentice
― Assassin's Apprentice
Rothfussians
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— last activity Jun 05, 2025 06:59AM
Patrick Rothfuss needs a goodreads.com group! For fantasy fans and anyone that appreciates beautifully written books. Discuss The Name of the Wind, T ...more
The Banished Lands and The Bloodsworn
— 1430 members
— last activity Jan 04, 2026 03:59PM
A group to discuss all books written within The Faithful and the Fallen and Of Blood and Bone, as well as The Bloodsworn, by John Gwynne. We will disc ...more
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