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

Patrick Rothfuss

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Patrick Rothfuss
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: June 6
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Patrick James Rothfuss
Devices
Left
Look
Looks
Make
Afire
Tends

More quotes by Patrick Rothfuss

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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.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I take back everything I ever said about that boy being clever. He turned around to face the bar while leveling an accusatory finger at the closed door. That, he said firmly to the room in general, is what comes of working with iron every day.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Character is half the reason we read. We're excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.
Patrick Rothfuss
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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.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I love worldbuilding. It's as much fun for me as writing itself. It's like a hobby of mine.
Patrick Rothfuss
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There is nothing quite so delightfully mysterious as a secret in your own backyard.
Patrick Rothfuss
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One of my favorite artists on Deviantart.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Generally my favorite remarks always come from my readers. I've had people say my books made them laugh, or cry, or that it frightened them late at night.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Performance and music are inexorably tied together. And hell, I'll watch Brittany's Toxic music video all day. But there's a difference between that and listening to Leo Kottke play guitar. One is entertainment. The other is Music.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Remember this son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can't sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart. And, some men's minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly, no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.
Patrick Rothfuss
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You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen.
Patrick Rothfuss
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It's my belief that you should never show your work to anyone in the publishing world until it shines like a diamond. Rough drafts don't shine, as a rule. Mine certainly didn't. That's why I was rejected for years and years.
Patrick Rothfuss
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When someone writes something dazzlingly brilliant, people want to imitate it. The result is a lot of less-than-brilliant knock-offs. Elves, Dwarves, Goblin army, cursed ring, evil sorcerer. Tolkien did it. It rocked. Let's move on. Let's do something new.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I don't feel beholden to follow the real world at all. The important thing is to know WHY things turned out the way they did. You need to understand the reasons for events, or at least be able to make reasonable guesses about them.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Secrets of the heart. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.
Patrick Rothfuss
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It might not be true, but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.
Patrick Rothfuss