Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The)

Adolin accepted the envelope, and took her hand in his as he did so. The two shared a moment, melting over one another. Yes, Kaladin was increasingly convinced that the woman wasn’t going to be of immediate danger to Adolin. If she was some kind of con woman, she wasn’t after Adolin’s life. Just his dignity.

Too late, Kaladin thought, watching Adolin sit back with a stupid grin on his face. That’s dead and burned already.

“I ain’t grouchy,” Teft snapped. ‘I just have a low threshold for stupidity.”

“You like lies?” Shallan asked.

“Good lies,” Pattern said. “That lie. Good lie.”

“What makes a lie good?” Shallan asked, taking careful notes, recording Pattern’s exact words.

“True lies.”

“Pattern, those two are opposites.”

“Hmmmm...Light makes shadow. Truth makes lies. Hmmmm.”

Power is an illusion of perception.”

Shallan frowned.

“Don’t mistake me,” Jasnah continued. “Some kinds of power are real – power to command armies, power to Soulcast. These come into play far less often than you would think. On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power – authority – exists only as it is perceived.

“You say I have wealth. This is true, but you have also seen that I do not often use it. You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king. In that case, my authority is not a real thing. It is mere vapors – an illusion. I can create that illusion for them, as can you.”

It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth

Careful planning was, indeed, the water that nourished innovation

“You’ve told me the table perceives itself this way.”

“Because people have considered it, long enough, as being a table,” Pattern said. “It becomes truth to the table because of the truth the people create for it.”

“Everything will be forgiven,” Shallan said.

“See?”

“Except your breath,” she added.

“You all seem odd to me,” Syl said lightly. “Everyone but Rock, who is a complete gentleman.”

“He thinks you’re a god. You shouldn’t encourage him.”

“Why not? I am a god.”

Expectation wasn’t just about what people expected of you.

It was about what you expected of yourself.