Words of Radiance

“I have to protect him,” Kaladin whispered.

Why?

“If I protect …” He coughed. “If I protect…only the people I like, it means that I don’t care about doing what is right.” If he did that, he only cared about what was convenient for himself.

That wasn’t protecting. That was selfishness.

To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of one’s body against oneself.

“‘Honor’ is a word applied to the actions of men from the past who have had their lives scrubbed clean by historians.”

“Someone has to care,” she said, starting down the hallway. “Too few people care, these days.”

“You say this while coming in to rob people.”

“Sure. Ain’t gonna hurt them.”

“You have an odd sense of morality, mistress.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Every sense of morality is odd.”

I watched you keep your word with perfection. This is a thing lost to most people—it is the only genuine beauty in the world.

All stories have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

To be human was often to be forced to choose between distasteful options.

“We just need to be more optimistic.”

“Being optimistic does not change facts.”

She’d had so much more time when she was younger. She couldn’t help thinking she’d wasted much of it.

Better to be overly cautious than naive.

Jasnah hadn’t cared what people thought of her, yet had always kept her appearance immaculate. Not that Jasnah had acted alluringly—never for a moment. In fact, she’d disparaged such behavior in no uncertain terms. Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will, she’d said. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.

No, Jasnah had not approved of seduction as a tool. However, people responded differently to those who looked in control of themselves.

“I am a soldier, not a musician,” Kaladin said. “Besides, music is for women.”

“All people are musicians,” Wit countered. “The question is whether or not they share their songs. As for music being feminine, it’s interesting that the woman who wrote that treatise—the one you all practically worship in Alethkar—decided that all of the feminine tasks involve sitting around having fun while all the masculine ones involve finding someone to stick a spear in you. Telling, eh?”

“Where is he?”

“Doing things he finds very important. I would fault him for it, as I find nothing more frightening than a man trying to do what he has decided is important. Very little in the world has ever gone astray—at least on a grand scale—because a person decided to be frivolous.”

It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth.

To be human is to seek beauty.

She let the world consume her. The familiar sound of pencil on paper, the focus of creation. Beauty was out there, all around. To create art was not to capture it, but to participate in it.