Brent Weeks Quotations

Telling a story is like trying to eat grapes with a fork. It's always trying to get away from you. And if you're a good author, and you've challenged yourself, and you're telling big stories, there's more and more that's trying to get away from you simultaneously.

My writing has a lot of surprising twists,

I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity.

Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.

'The Black Prism' is a story of emperors and prisoners and magic set in a Mediterranean, 1600-esque world. It's a fantasy story; it's fast and fun and inventive.

It's easier for me to write certain character types because of my own life experiences, but I find it too artistically limiting to only write about red-headed kids who grew up in small town Montana. That's really part of the fun of fantasy, I think. Our imagination is basically unlimited. Okay, that's a terrifying thing about fantasy, too.

I believe that it's an author's job to cast his imagination into the far spaces. Your life should - and I think it's inescapable that it will - inform your work. I'm all for using anything that can make your art better, but your intuition should be an equal partner.

'The Black Prism' is a story about two brothers who respect and fear and admire and contend with and shape each other. In other words, it's a story of normal brothers - who happen to be in extraordinary circumstances.

Delusional people tend to believe in what they're doing.

Let me make this real simple. You will not break me. The hole will not break me. I will not break. I will not be broken.

I don’t know how you’ve managed a tan,” Daydra said, “but you’ll have to keep it up, and talk like a pirate. If you want to work for Momma K, you’re going to be the Sethi pirate girl. You have a husband or a lover?” Kaldrosa hesitated. “Husband,” she admitted. “The last beating nearly killed him.” “If you do this, you’ll never get him back. A man can forgive a woman who leaves whoring for him, but he’ll never forgive one who goes whoring for him.” “It’s worth it,” Kaldrosa said. “To save his life, it’s worth it.

Her nudity is her armor. It blinded the drooling fools. They couldn't see anything else while they saw her body.

If embarrassment were a muscle, I'd be huge.

one doesn't interrupt a beautiful girl unless one is going to be funny.

You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.

The God gives simpler problems to lesser men.

Light cannot be chained.

How can one love the light and live in darkness?

I’ll spend my life training just for the moment I have my chance at you. I’ll wait until you think I’ve forgotten today. I’ll wait until you think it was just a dumb guild rat’s threat. After I’m a master, you’ll jump at shadows for a while. But after you jump a dozen times and I’m not there, you won’t jump just once, and that’s when I’ll be there. I don’t care if you kill me at the same time. I’ll trade my life for yours.

Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's a lie.

It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die

My question is, do you believe in an evil possessed of its own purity? or does every act intend some good?...

Love is a fragile, corruptible thing. And yet I have seen it evince a curious strength. It is beyond any comprehension Love is a weakness that once in a great while triumphs over strength.

...if reality is hard and flat and unjust, then it's better to adjust to what really is than to complain that it isn't what you wish. That was what made me lose faith..... But having lost it, soon I doubted my lack of faith. There were niggling hints of meaning everywhere.

Life is meaningless, when we take a life we take nothing of value.

The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.

Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose. - Durzo Blint

A man’s greatest treasures are his illusions - Durzo Blint

A wolf can be a wolfhound, son, but it can never be a lapdog.

There was a nice dilemma. How does one interject into a polite conversation, "By the way, in case you're ever interested, I do have a penise."?

Why do you keep saying incarnations like I’m some kind of god?” It wasn’t a great question, but the real questions were so big that Kylar didn’t even know how ask them. “You are worshipped in a few remote areas where your master wasn’t very careful about showing the full extent of his powers.” “What?!

Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well.

Durzo pulled out a gold Gunder from his pouch. Crowns Roth wins, Castles I lose. He flipped the coin. It bounced on the table and, impossibly, landed on edge. There´s always another choice, Kylar said.

The truth was, Azoth hated Azoth. Azoth was a coward, passive, weak, afraid, disloyal. Azoth had hesitated. Master Blint didn’t know it, but the poisons on the needle had killed Azoth. He was Kylar now, and Kylar would be everything Azoth hadn’t dared to be.

The intuition that had kept Kylar from Vi even from the first time she'd tried to seduce him at the Drake estate suddenly crystallized: You don't share your life with a woman's body, you share your life with a woman.

The duke sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “Have you ever done this before?” “Set up someone by pretending to be someone else? Sure. Pretended to get killed? Not so much.

You’ll come with us,” she said. “Sure,” Gavin said. “It wasn’t a request.” “Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request.

It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin.

The master who fears the choices his people will make enough to take those choices away isn't worth serving.

When you don't know what to do, do what's right and do what's in front of you. But not necessarily what's right in front of you.

If you are not free to say no, your yes is meaningless.

And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?

Life is empty. Life is meaningless. When we take a life, we arn't taking anything of value. Wetboys are killers. Thats all we do. Thats all we are. There are no poets in the bitter business.

Evil is simple and empty. Evil has no mysterious depths. We stare into a dark hole and fill it with our fears, but it is only a hole.

Sometimes to love is easy, but to accept love is hard.

Maybe when you were born on the top of the mountain you could pretend the mountain didn't matter, but those who climbed it and those born at its base who could never climb at all knew differently.

You have to be a little bad to make history.

Will covers a multitude of flaws, just as love covers a multitude of sins.

Remember that time you tried to hump the bridge?

It had better be. It doesn't do much when it's soft.

Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth's air.

Elene gasped and sat up. "Kylar Thaddeus Stern!" Kylar giggled. "Thaddeus? That's a good one. I knew a Thaddeus once." "So did I. He was a blind idiot." "Really?" Kylar said, his eyes dancing. "The one I knew was famous for his gigantic-" "Kylar!" Elene interrupted, motioning toward Uly. "His gigantic what?" Uly asked. "Now you did it." Elene said, "His gigantic what, Kyler?" "Feet. And you know what they say about big feet." He winked lasciviously at Elene. "What?" Uly asked. "Big Shoes," Kylar said.

You'd be surprised at what you'd do to stay alive.

Assassination is an art, milord. And I am the city's most accomplished artist.

You will find no answers here, just choices.

I am Sa’kagé a lord of shadows. I claim the shadows that the Shadow may not. I am the strong arm of deliverance. I am Shadowstrider. I am the Scales of Justice. I am He-Who-Guards-Unseen. I am Shadowslayer. I am Nameless. The coranti shall not go unpunished. My way is hard but I serve unbroken. In ignobility nobility. In shame honor. In darkness light. I will do justice and love mercy. Until the king returns I shall not lay my burden down.” --(Durzo Blint to Jorses Alkestes, quoted to Skylar at the edge of Ezra's Forest.)

A few months ago you assassinated a man who called himself a god; now you're going after a goddess in truth. Unless you can figure out a way to kill continents, after this you're going to have to retire.

A wet boy has a deader, an assassin has a target, because assassins sometimes miss.

You don't need to like reality, only be strong enough to face it

Love is a madness. Love is Failer - Durzo Blint

Love is not a whim. Love is not a flower that fades with a few fleeting years. Love is a choice wedded to action, my husband, and I choose you, and I will choose you every day for the rest of my life.

Dying well is easy,it only takes a moment of courage. It’s living well that I couldn’t do. What’s death compared to that.

There's no guarantee that justice will win out or that a noble sacrifice will make any difference. But when it does, there's something that still swells my chest. There's magic in that.... It tells me that's the way things are supposed to be.

Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man's highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.

Why did women always believe that talking about a problem would fix it? Some issues were corpses. Hot air made them fester and rot and spread their disease to everything else. Better to bury it and move on.

Life is empty. Life is worthless. When we take a life, we aren't taking anything of value.- Durzo Blint

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.

If I tell you a secret can you keep it quiet? “Well, I can. I’m not so sure about Doll Girl.

Moments of beauty sustain us through hours of ugliness.

If you looked busy, you could get away with almost anything.

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don't fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules.... We don't fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.

Life is nothing in itself. It’s a place marker that proves who’s winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing but the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it’s an insult to lose. The ends don’t justify the means. The means don’t justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justice.” ~ Durzo Blint

Put on some armor. Just remember what's armor and what's you, so when it's time to take it off, you can.

..because the only kind of love I have to offer is stupid and blind and so deep and powerful that I feel like I'm cracking just to hold it in.

If you worry about what everyone is trying to do, you become a spectator and not a player.

Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.