Christopher Paolini
American writer of fantasy fiction, best known as being the author of the Inheritance cycle.
Better to die than to live in fear.
‘You cheated.’ ‘No, I exploited a weakness in my opponent. There is a difference.’
So tell me, is it true that men have ten toes, as is said?
‘I am not who I was, but I know who I am.’
Characters are born from necessity.
It never struck me as interesting that I didn't go to school — we had our own little world. I always thought of kids who were going to regular school as if they're the others, the separate ones.
“I am the victor. In the end nothing else matters.’
‘You of all people should know that everything in this world must be paid for, whether in gold, time, or blood.’
Death, he had come to believe, was a corrosive thing, and the more he was around it, the more it gnawed away at who he was.
‘I don’t know how else to teach you what you need to learn except by showing you your mistakes over and over again until you stop making them.’
War was a catalog of madness.
‘When you teach them—teach them not to fear. Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant, pounding companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what is right.’
‘I am not ready. But when will we ever be ready?’
‘I cannot forgive, but I understand.’
My father's work will not go unfinished, even if it takes me to the grave. That is what I want you, as a rider, to understand. All of Ajihad's plans, all his strategies and goals, they are mine now. I will not fail him by being weak. The empire will be brought down, Galbatorix will with dethroned, and the rightful government will be raised.
No-one can function properly without occasional peace and quiet.
You must learn to see what you are looking at.
‘Then I guess we have no choice but to go forward. When have we ever had any choice but to go forward?’
The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living.
Applied properly, it [logic] can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.