Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

I mean, there are things in the book you could never do in a movie.

I've never adapted a book I didn't love.

I think the person creates the artist. And I think when you get lost within your person, your artistry get lost, too. It's like in 'Birdman.' Because the artist inside you is attached to your soul. And when you're not attached to yourself anymore, the soul goes away. You can't let that happen.

Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.

I think if you can take something out and it doesn't change the book, it doesn't need to be there.

I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.

All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.

Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The poorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. The best of us start from scratch with every new book.

Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.

A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.

I like big books and I cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny That when a kid walks in with The Name of the Wind Like a hardbound brick of win. Story bling. Wanna swipe that thing Cause you see that boy is speeding Right through the book he’s reading. I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading. Wanna curl up with that for ages, All thousand pages. Reviewers tried to warn me. But with that plot you hooked Me like Bradley. Ooh, crack that fat spine. You know I wanna make you mine. This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.

I'm criticizing the way they are perceived. I was going through a book of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's 1970s performance work the other day. These people did two, even three Documentas or Venice Biennales over the course of a decade without any fuss. They would just treat it as any of their other engagements, with the same level of dignity and commitment they'd reserve for a one-day event in a small gallery on the Austrian mountains.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

The predominant difference between television and film is the pace to which you work, but the development of the character or the process for playing the character isn't necessarily different.

We have the same genetic code for all living creatures. We have a large number of genes that are manifestly the same, but with detail differences - they look like different drafts of the same book. In extreme cases, like a human and a beetroot, it's like the difference between Matthew and Luke's Gospel - clearly they tell the same story, but with different words. Whereas with a human and a chimp, it's like two different printings of Matthew, with a few typos in one.

Allowing for exceptions, there is still one basic difference between the traditional arts and the mass-media arts: in the traditional arts, the artist grows; in a mass medium, the artist decays profitably.

Sometimes you write and you find yourself almost wondering how it will turn out. I don't think every writer sort of almost admits that at some stage his books can take on their own kind of life it selves and simply lead away into directions that they're not kind of prepared for.

Sometimes I wish I were a character in a book and there was a writer out there giving me things to say.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

Yeah, we've become really good friends. Our characters start dating in the book, and um, yeah, I think we - and we made up little back stories to our characters and little outtakes that we'd bring up to Edgar as a joke, and you know, kind of see different sides of stuff. So yeah, we have a really good time.

I am thrilled when I read about fans using my stories as springboards to read about either the historical characters or the myths and legends in the books.

My favorite new character isn't new, but more fleshed out - Gadd, the alekeep at the Tunnel. He's got him some teeth and tats. His history is hinted at in Discourse, and I plan to explore it more in later books.

You mean, like a book?