“If we must put our head into the lion’s mouth, let us make certain that he chokes upon our flesh!”

“Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.”

“Ravens and crows. Rats Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurrences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders!The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night.These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one we beg: "Let it begin!" -Journal of the Unknown Scholar, entry for The Feast of Freia, 1000 NE”

“And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.”

“Breeze chuckled. "He was completely insane, you know. The worse things got, the more he'd joke. Iremember how chipper he was the very day after one of our worst defeats, when we lost most of ourskaa army to that fool Yeden. Kell walked in, a spring in his step, making one of his inane jokes.""Sounds insensitive," Allrianne said.Ham shook his head. "No. He was just determined. He always said that laughter was something theLord Ruler couldn't take from him. He planned and executed the overthrow of a thousand-yearempire—and he did it as a kind of . . . penance for letting his wife die thinking that he hated her. But, hedid it all with a smirk on his lips. Like every joke was his way of slapping fate in the face.""We need what he had," Elend said.”

“That's why we get annoyed by you Idrians. So high, so certain that what you do is right. If your god asked you to give up your Breath—or even the Breath of your child—wouldn't you do it? You give up your children to become monks, forcing them into a life of servitude, don't you? That's seen as a sign of faith. Yet when we do something to serve our gods, you twist your lips at us and call us blasphemers.”

“In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.”