Quotes from book

The Name of the Wind

“No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp!”

“Just pity him, my boy. Tomorrow we'll be on our way, but he'll have to keep his own disagreeable company until the day he dies.”

“Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”

“She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.”

“The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

“Congratulations. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Ever.”

“If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.”

“A poet is a musician who can't sing.”

“What do they do to students at the University who eavesdrop?” Bast asked curiously.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I was never caught. I think making you sit and listen to the rest of my story should be punishment enough.”

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

“I learned to love the feel of good words.”

“Do you just want to get by? Or do you want to make me proud?”

“When left to its own devices it tends to make me look as if I’ve been set afire.”

“Anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.”

“All stories are true.”

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

“Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

“I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.”

“The best lies about me are the onestold.”