I wasn't it expecting it to be Robert Jordan's eye of the world that got me back into reading, but I'm glad it was. What a fun book. Not without its problems, of course, but I think I enjoyed it more this time than when I first read it in high school. I've finally taken to underlining my favorite passages, which is something I never understood in my technically competent but visionless youth, but I'm starting to see the point of. I may want to write a few more words about it in a couple days, but I thought it would be fun to highlight some of those fragments that jumped out at me this time. Perhaps they are more or less interesting out of context.
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There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
"I have all stories, and I will tell all stories."
That others knew and believed made all the difference.
Around a farm the work never really got done; as soon as one thing was finished two more always needed doing.
Light, who am I?
Lan scowled, but fell silent. "I am coming as quickly as I can, Rand, I promise you."
"You talk when you should be listening."
Surely it would not matter if he delayed just a short time in going to the tower?
Your destiny, the voice whispered, insistent now, eager.
"You listen sharp, think deep, and guard your tongue."
"Did someone suggest burning my inn?" he asked softly.
"You have forgotten who you were, forgotten what you were."
"I am not a cheese for slicing."
"This fellow . . . I believe he might sell his mother to Trollocs for stew meat if the price was right."
"The Source is the river; the Aes Sedai, the waterwheel."
"Before I let the Dark One have you, I will destroy you myself."
"But there is no other choice, except to run and hide and run again for the rest of your lives."
"I hope you remembered to forget ..."
"Did they tell you the Eye of the World would serve you?"
"You live like a beetle under a rock, and you think your slime is the universe."
"She loves you, too, but she's not for you, or you for her."
"Go then, but you won't escape."
"Well, are your feet pegged to the ground?"
"They don't care about finding the truth. They think they know that already."
The entire city was broken.
"There isn't any treasure here. There isn't anything but dust."
... a piercing whine just beyond hearing ...
"I should have tried harder," he whispered.
"She is strong, intelligent, and quite capable of finding her way to Whitebridge alone."
"Burn me, I wish I could forget."
"You can't say it in words. It's more of a feeling."
"The Light will not help you, boy, and the Eye of the World will not serve you. You are my hound, and if you will not course at my command, I will strangle you with the corpse of the Great Serpent!"
"A crystal lattice covering an island, and it hums when the moon is up."
"The world will put a hook in your mouth."
"the mighty axe does violence to the helpless tree, and is harmed by it."
"I'll bet you get to run away a lot."
"The Lost cannot be happy."
He ran his eyes across the open area, over people moving about on their daily business, and when he brought them back a Myrddraal was halfway across the square.
Sometimes Rand looked back, but the road behind was always empty.
"I will find the song, or another will find the song, but the song will be sung, this year or in a year to come. As it once once, so shall it be again, world without end."
Not complete. Accept. Full Heart. Full mind. You still struggle. Only complete when you accept.
The wolves had no notion of time the way men did, no reason to divide a day into hours. The seasons were time enough for them, and the light and the dark. No need for more.
"... but it's the stedding makes the Ogier, not the Ogier make the stedding."
"In the end there was nothing left of him but the stories, and most of them wrong."
To soar.
"There is not truce with the Shadow. There is no mercy for Darkfriends."
Outside, the sky muttered again.
"Think of it. Life everlasting and power beyond dreams."
"If my hounds must pull you down, they may not be gentle."
For and instant the burned face held a look of sublime joy that turned to horror in the final moment, as if he had seen something waiting he did not expect.
"Bloody ravens don't even wait for things to die."
"You are mine," the raven said, and the sharp beak stabbed into his eye.
"They say she can cut right through to what a man wants to hide."
"Sometimes I think the reason you humans are the way you are is because your threads are so short."
"The Great Trees are all gone, and no one remembers them."
"If a man tries to change the direction of his life and the Pattern has room for it, the Wheel just weaves on and takes it in."
The Whitecloak was another human being, and the night had come alive to take them all.
"In these times many things are dissolving, and breaking apart. Old barriers weaken, old walls crumble."
"Or perhaps it is the end of Ages, the end of time itself. The end of the world."
"Pain and division comes to the whole world, and this man stands at the heart of it."
One minute Lan was in the doorway, the next he was at the bedside, as if he had not bothered with the intervening space.
"You can't hold a man to blame for what he does when he's crazy, can you?"
"This contest between us has taken place countless times before. Each time your face is different, and your name, but each time it is you."
It was as if the dark became denser the more light there was, thickening as it fought against being diminished.
Length on man-thick length sent ripples spreading rolling on and on until at last a tail rose, waving a point like a wasp's stinger for an instant in the twilight, at least five spans into the air. All along that length fat tentacles writhed like monstrous worms, as many as a centipede's legs.
"I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him because he makes you smile."
All women are Aes Sedai.
"All things must grow where they are, according to the Pattern, and face the turning of the Wheel."
"It was not what I was made for, but all was breaking apart, and they were alone, and I was all they had. It was not what I was made for, but I have kept the faith."
"Some of us are bound no longer. The seals weaken..."
"This is my place," the Green Man said, "and you shall hurt no living thing here."
The cord was all. It hummed. It sang. It called Rand's soul.
That should mean something. Thought was a new thing. I can think. I means me.
Abruptly she flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. "I'm sorry, Rand. I'm sorry. I don't care. Truly, I don't."
"You needed something more than you had ever needed anything before in your life, and you reached out to the one thing that could give it to you."
"Make them safe? Thom said men who have been gentled die because they stop wanting to live."
"for the grave is no bar to my call."
"It is not right that Treebrother should fall to the Blight."
"I'm going away, but not home."
"The Dragon is Reborn."
