Brandon Sanderson

Quotes

1. She felt like drawing this scene, but knew it was the type of moment she couldn’t capture on a page. It wasn’t about content or composition, but the pleasure of living.

   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.

   p. 150

2. 

   “You make it sound like having the power to change the world is a bad thing.”

   “Bad? No. Abhorrent, depressing, ghastly. Having power is a terrible burden, the worst thing imaginable, except for every other alternative.”

   p. 683

3. 

   Most cities lived on the very edge of civilization. Everyone talked about towns and villages out in the middle of nowhere as if they were uncivilized, but she’d found people in those places pleasant, even-tempered, and comfortable with their quieter way of life.

   Not in cities. Cities balanced on the edge of sustainability, always one step from starvation. When you pressed so may people together, their cultures, ideas, and stenches rubbed off on one another. The results wasn’t civilization. It was contained chaos, pressurized, bottled up so it couldn’t escape.

   p. 629

4. 

   Jasnah couldn’t help but smile. For over a decade, she’d dreamed of uniting the best minds of the kingdom in a coordinated effort. She’d been ignored; all anyone had wanted to discuss was her lack of belief in their god. Well, they were focused now. Turned out the end of the world had to actually arrive before people would take it seriously.

   p. 521

5. 

   “Be careful. People who aren’t me are prone to spontaneous bouts of sincerity.”

   “Which is bad?”

   “Of course! ‘Sincerity’ is a word people use to justify their chronic dullness.”

   “Well, I like sincere people,” Shallan said, raising her cup. “It’s delightful how surprised they look when you push them down the stairs.”

   “Now, that’s unkind. You shouldn’t push people down the stairs for being sincere. You push people down the stairs for being stupid.”

   “What if they’re sincere and stupid?”

   “Then you run.”

   p. 680

6. 

   “You can’t civilize war,” Dalinar said. “There’s no painting it up and making it pretty.”

   p. 125

7. 

   “Morality is an axis that doesn’t interest us,” Mraize said calmly. “Only loyalty and power are relevant, for morality is as ephemeral as the changing weather. It depends upon the angle from which you view it.”

   p. 231

8. 

   Dalinar bowed his head for a prayer. Let me be stronger than those who would kill me. Simple and to the point, the kind he figured the Almighty would prefer.

   p. 261

9. 

   His sincerity was so unexpected. Dalinar had been around Alethi politicians so much that he found honesty an obscure thing, like a language he no longer spoke.

   p. 242

10. 

    These are the men…well, these are the men who actually change the world. And they terrify me. For men never see as far as they think they do.

    p. 682

11. 

    “Don’t deflect your evils by pointing out the faults of others,” Shallan said.

    p. 231

12. 

    Taravangian did not believe in any religion, for they were unwieldy things, designed to fill gaps in human understanding with nonsensical explanations, allowing people to sleep well at night, granting them a false sense of comfort and control and preventing them from stretching further for true understanding.

    p. 568