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Title: Words of Radiance Authors: Brandon Sanderson Category:supplementals Number of Highlights: 40 Date: 2025-11-11 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
âExpectation. That is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.
Tags:expectation
Expectation wasnât just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.
Tags:habits,motivation
Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.
Tags:knowledge
As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.ââ
Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.â
Tags:assumption,culture,perception
âI will protect even those I hate,â Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. âSo long as it is right.â
To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of oneâs body against oneself.
Power is an illusion of perception.â
Tags:perception,power
âI ainât grouchy,â Teft snapped. âI just have a low threshold for stupidity.â
âThe Knights Radiant,â the Almighty said, standing up beside Dalinar, watching the knight attack the nightmare beast. âThey were a solution, a way to offset the destruction of the Desolations. Ten orders of knights, founded with the purpose of helping men fight, then rebuild.â
âSpren are . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . and another. Fragments broken off.â
Tags:fantasy
âIt frightens me,â Shallan said, âbecause we all see the world by some kind of light personal to us, and that light changes our perception. I donât see clearly. I want to, but I donât know if I ever truly can.â
Tags:perception
âWhat you did tonight was clever,â Wit said. âYou turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.â
âAll stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.â
Tags:communication,stories
Contradictions. Those were what made people real. Jasnah exhausted, yet somehow still strongâstronger, even, because of the vulnerability she revealed. Jasnah terrified, yet also brave, for one allowed the other to exist. Jasnah overwhelmed, yet powerful.
Tags:contradiction,humanity,resilience
As for music being feminine, itâs interesting that the woman who wrote that treatiseâthe one you all practically worship in Alethkarâdecided that all of the feminine tasks involve sitting around having fun while all the masculine ones involve finding someone to stick a spear in you. Telling, eh?â
Tags:social_construct
He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing heâd seen in his entire life.
Tags:love,problem_solving
âDoing things he finds very important. I would fault him for it, as I find nothing more frightening than a man trying to do what he has decided is important. Very little in the world has ever gone astrayâat least on a grand scaleâbecause a person decided to be frivolous.â
Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will, sheâd said. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.
This was the mark of humankind: to take the wild, unorganized world and make something logical of it. You could get so much more done when everything was in its place, when you could easily find what or whom you needed. Creativity required such things. Careful planning was, indeed, the water that nourished innovation.
Tags:creativity,systems
âOn both my most stupid days and my most incredible,â Taravangian said, âI am unable to interact with those around me in a meaningful way. It is like . like I become a gear that cannot fit those turning beside it. Too small or too large, it does not matter. The clock will not work.â
âSo yes, I, Adolin Kholinâcousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedomâhave shat myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.â He downed the rest of his wine. âYou are a very strange woman.â
To create art was not to capture it, but to participate in it.
Tags:art,creativity
âAll things have three components: the soul, the body, and the mind. That place you saw, Shadesmar, is what we call the Cognitive Realmâthe place of the mind.
Dalinar felt as if heâd been fighting on the battlefield for ten hours straight. Odd, how a few hours of delicate conversation could feel so similar to that.
Tags:speaking
âWhat has happened to us?â Dalinar asked. âWhere is our honor?â âHonor is dead,â a voice whispered from beside him. Dalinar turned and looked at Captain Kaladin. He hadnât noticed the bridgeman walking down the steps behind him. Kaladin took a deep breath, then looked at Dalinar. âBut Iâll see what I can do. If this goes poorly, take care of my men.â Spear in hand, he grabbed the edge of the wall and flung himself over, dropping to the sands of the arena floor below.
Tags:honor
âIâve learned to accept the world as it is, Amaram,â Sadeas said, turning his horse. âThatâs something very few people are willing to do. They stumble along, hoping, dreaming, pretending. That doesnât change a single storming thing in life. You have to stare the world in the eyes, in all its grimy brutality. You have to acknowledge its depravities. Live with them. Itâs the only way to accomplish anything meaningful.â
Tags:acceptance
In that instant he knew a truth he should always have known. If Iâd been there, on that night, awake instead of drunk and asleep . Gavilar would still have died. I couldnât have beaten this creature. I canât do it now, and I couldnât have done it then. I couldnât have saved him. It brought peace, and Dalinar finally set down that boulder, the one heâd been carrying for over six years.
Tags:depression,truth
Yes, from now on, Adolin would lead the battles. Dalinar would change the world.
Shallan was barely listening. A Blade with the back edge ridged like flowing waves. Or perhaps tongues of fire. Etchings all along its surface. Curved, sinuous. She knew this Blade. It belonged to her brother Helaran.
He felt at his shoulder, the one where heâd lost his arm so long ago. There, his fingers prodded a new nub of flesh that had begun sprouting from his scar. âOh, storms yes! Everybody, give the Lopen your spheres! I have glowing that needs to be done.â
âEventually, youâre going to have to give away authority and let it stay given, Dalinar,â Amaram said softly. âYou canât hold it all, pretending you arenât in charge, but then ignore orders and advice as if you were.â
âI will do what I can to help,â Wit said, âand for that reason, I must go. I cannot risk too much, because if he finds me, then I become nothingâa soul shredded and broken into pieces that cannot be reassembled. What I do here is more dangerous than you could ever know.â
âYouâve told me the table perceives itself this way.â âBecause people have considered it, long enough, as being a table,â Pattern said. âIt becomes truth to the table because of the truth the people create for it.â
âThe farmer found the painting near the privy, so assumed it was to be used for such a purpose. The lighteyes found the empty frame in the hall of art, and assumed it to be a masterwork.
Her father smiled. âIs it terribly difficult for you?â he asked softly. âLiving with the rest of us, suffering our average wits and simple thoughts? Is it lonely to be so singular in your brilliance, Jasnah?â
âI find sleeping very odd,â Pattern said. âI know that all beings in the Physical Realm engage in it. Do you find it pleasant? You fear nonexistence, but is not unconsciousness the same thing?â âWith sleep, itâs only temporary.â âAh. It is all right, because in the morning, you each return to sentience.â
âBy my best guess, spren are elements of the Cognitive Realm that have leaked into the physical world. Theyâre concepts that have gained a fragment of sentience, perhaps because of human intervention.
I was a fool not to spot that an assassination attempt was coming, Kaladin thought. Sadeas had tried hard to undermine Dalinar at the feast a few days back, with the revelation of the visions. It was a classic ploy. Discredit your enemy, then kill him, to make certain he didnât become a martyr.
âKing Gavilar,â Eshonai said, as if mulling over the name. âHe should not have revealed his plans to us that night. He did not know. He bragged, thinking we would welcome the return of our gods.â