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Nobody cooks using just one ingredient. Why would you write using just one flavor of story?

Patrick Rothfuss

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Patrick Rothfuss
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: June 6
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Patrick James Rothfuss
Cooks
Using
Nobody
Story
Write
Ingredient
Stories
Flavor
Writing
Would
Ingredients

More quotes by 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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But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. This is rare and pure and perfect.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Thieves, Heretics, and Whores
Patrick Rothfuss
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One of my favorite artists on Deviantart.
Patrick Rothfuss
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It's hard to be wrongfully accused, but it's worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.
Patrick Rothfuss
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All explicit knowledge is translated knowledge, and all translation is imperfect.
Patrick Rothfuss
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When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
Patrick Rothfuss
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For most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans.
Patrick Rothfuss
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In brief, worldbuilding is different than setting in my opinion. Setting is a room. A backdrop. It's scenery. But without good worldbuilding, you can't have realistic feeling scenery. You can't have cool, unique backdrops for your story.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Joss [Whedon] is an excellent storyteller. It really doesn't matter what medium he's working in.
Patrick Rothfuss
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There is some conflict between religion and science in my world, but that's nothing new. Science, at its root, is a rational discipline. Religion, on the other hand, is fundamentally trans-rational. Both of them attempt to solve problems, but since their methodology is vastly different, they can't help but come into conflict.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I have no balance. My life is a hot mess.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Denna is a wild thing, I explained. Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna.
Patrick Rothfuss
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When you read a fantasy novel part of the fun is getting to explore a new world. Everyone knows that. But I believe the same is true about characters. You can explore interesting people in the same way that you explore a town or a culture.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I'm kind of balanced between excited about the potential of the project, and the knowledge that I shouldn't get my hopes up. I like to be practical, and the truth is, these deals fall apart all the time.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.
Patrick Rothfuss
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I'm not a big fan of overt marketing. I'd much rather just put things out there for people to see. I'm just putting it out there for people to see. If people think this is cool, I'm hoping they'll tell their friends.
Patrick Rothfuss
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If you fall, you fall, Elodin shrugged. Sometimes falling teaches us things too. In dreams you often fall before you wake.
Patrick Rothfuss