Quotes from Patrick Rothfuss

The desire for knowledge shapes a man.

I swear I've never met a man who has your knack for lack of social grace. If you weren't naturally charming, someone would have stabbed you by now.

My mom once lost track of me at the zoo and when she found me I was lecturing a man about the difference between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I was about 3 1/2.

There is something powerfully beguiling about the excited eyes of a young woman. They can pull all manner of nonsense out of a foolish young man, and I was no exception to this rule.

You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

You," I said, "are sweet music in a distant room.

Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician's curse.

The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.

I firmly believe that we're all good people, but sometimes it's hard to understand how to do good.

Don't get me wrong, hard and soft fantasy stories can both be good. But you need to know which camp you're in. I'm into realism. I'm a hard fantasy guy.

Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

Everything said, you couldn't hope for a nicer day to have a half dozen ex-soldiers with hunting bows relieve you of everything you owned.

With his eyes and those hands there won't be a woman safe in all the world when he starts hunting after the ladies.' 'Courting, dear,' my father corrected gently. 'Semantics,' she shrugged.

Appearance is a type of power.

Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.

I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket," Wil said. "And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake.

I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad.

All explicit knowledge is translated knowledge, and all translation is imperfect.

Fencing is more a sport than a martial art. It would be like basing your knowledge of roman phalanx warfare on NFL football.

What? No defense? Any student of mine must be able to defend his ideas against an attack. No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp!

When you're 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren't really good. OK, let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.

You don't want the world destroyed, because, you know, that's where your shoes are.

Science is just magic with better PR.

The way I cook it's more like mad science. There's a lot of inspiration and dramatic failure with the occasional gorgeous success.