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" One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that's lacking in our regular lives. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Reason
Shape
Comforting
Related Quotes:
" You can have an interesting story about a person living an interesting life. And if it's done well, that is just as engaging as the end of the world. A million people dying - we can't process. One person, we can process. "
Patrick Rothfuss
World
End
Life
" You don't want the world destroyed, because, you know, that's where your shoes are. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Shoes
Want
World
" Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means if you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Reading
Writing
Best
" I know better than to read reviews but I do it anyway. Somebody described my pacing as 'glacial.' I wasn't thrilled, but I think they meant it in a not entirely unflattering way. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Know
Reviews
Better
" I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Time
Short
Great
" I'm struggling with what is epic. People decided I was epic - if by epic, do you mean a big, heavy book? 'David Copperfield' is a big book - is it epic? Amount of time covered, length, drama, or story - that's the real appeal - if the story is long you have a better chance of becoming more connected. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Story
People
Book
" I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Bad
Writing
Time
" One thing I've learned now is that I should not say when a book is coming out until I'm sure I know. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Know
Book
One Thing
" I never set out to become 'famous.' I mean, when you're 14 you think 'I'm gonna become a writer and people will want my autograph and that'll be cool,' but you grow up and you learn that's just not how the world works. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be published and if I did it probably wouldn't be a big deal. "
Patrick Rothfuss
You
Cool
Myself
" 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
Me
Night
Mother
" I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Interesting
Write
Know
" After I'd been in college for a couple years I'd read Shakespeare and Frost and Chaucer and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance. I'd come to appreciate how gorgeous the English language could be. But most fantasy novels didn't seem to make the effort. "
Patrick Rothfuss
College
Effort
Language
" You've got a great chance in college to do all sorts of terrible irresponsible things, and you should totally do them. I mean, make huge mistakes. This is the time in your life if you screw up, it's okay because you can bounce back from it. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Time
College
Great
" I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Support
Meet
Me
" Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all the time you spend on entertainment. How much of your entertainment centers around stories? Most pieces of music tell stories. Even hanging out with your friends, you talk, you tell stories to each other. They're all stories. We live in stories. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Time
You
Think
" The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Need
Good
People
" As authors, most - most authors, our art is portraying the human condition. Trying to show you what it's like to be somebody else, trying to make you feel for somebody else. That means you have to have a high degree of empathy. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Trying
You
Human
" It's profoundly disorienting to go from zero to celebrity. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Go
Zero
Profoundly
" I'm a fan of books that are almost languorous in their storytelling. That is a little bit lost sometimes in the modern media that we have. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Sometimes
Lost
Media
" A lot of new writers assume you have to know the where the story is going and that it flows out as molten gold. But really, sometimes you think you are going to one place, but then you decide that is dumb idea. Then you go somewhere else and it is a worse idea. But then you switch again and you might have a beautiful accident. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Place
Think
Gold
" My mom once lost track of me at the zoo and when she found me I was lecturing a man about the difference between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I was about 3 1/2. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Lost
Me
Mom
" When you're 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren't really good. OK, let's be honest. A lot of them were crap. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Good
Cool
You
" I was the kid who was too geeky for the other kids. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Other
Geeky
Kid
" I almost got a psychology degree, I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion, epistomology, and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years. "
Patrick Rothfuss
Interesting
Me
Philosophy