“Do you think we could trust to the Pattern, to his destiny, to keep him alive, like some story? This isn’t a story, he isn’t some invincible hero, and if his thread is snipped out of the Pattern, the Wheel of Time won’t notice his going, and the Creator will produce no miracles to save us” (32)
“it may be inevitable that a … miasma … will escape even while he is still held. Like bubbles rising from the things rotting on the bottom of a pond. But these bubbles will drift through the Pattern until they at tach to a thread and burst” (96)
“Saidin is not saidar. The flows are different, the ways weaving are different” (122)
“Ter’angreal used the One Power instead of magnifying it. Each had apparently been made to do one thing and one thing alone, but though some were used now, no one was sure if those uses were anything like what they had been made for” (127)
“Do you have any idea what it is like to touch saidin, to hold it? Do you? I can feel the madness waiting. Seeping into me!” (141)
“Working two flows at once was far more than twice as hard as one of the same magnitude, and working three much more than twice again working two” (143)
“I found out for myself that when I was inside the void, I could feel saidin, like a light just beyond the corner of my eye in the emptiness” (144)
“‘That’s nothing like what I do,’ he protested. ‘Let it fill me? I have to reach out and take hold of saidin. Sometimes there’s still nothing there when I do, nothing I can touch, but if I didn’t reach for it, I could stand there forever and nothing would happen. It fills me all right, once I take hold, but surrender to it?’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Egwene, if I surrendered—even for a minute—saidin would consume me. It’s like a river of molten metal, an ocean of fire, all the light of the sun gathered in one spot. I must fight it to make it do what I want, fight it to keep from being eaten up’” (144)
“Of the Five Powers, Fire and Earth had been strongest in men in the Age of Legends, and Air and Water in women; Spirit had been shared equally” (145)
“Perhaps the figure on the banner was a Dragon; not even Aes Sedai seemed to know what that creature was” (169)
“There was only one edge, impossible though that seemed” (189)
“Tel’aran’rhiod. The Unseen World. The World of Dreams. Not the dreams of ordinary people, though sometimes they touched Tel’aran’rhiod briefly, in dreams that seemed as true as life. Because they were. In the Unseen World, what happened was real, in a strange way. Nothing that happened there affected what was a door opened in the World of Dreams would still be shut in the real world; a tree cut down there still stood here yet a woman could be killed there, or stilled. ‘Strange’ barely began to describe it. In the Unseen World the whole world lay open, and maybe other worlds, too; any place was attainable. Or at least, its reflection in the World of Dreams was. The weave of the Pattern could be read there-past, present and future-by one who knew how” (191-192)
“People who died unexpectedly in their sleep had often dreamed their way into Tel’aran’rhiod and in truth had died there” (198)
“He seemed to be stepping through a sheet of brilliant white light, infinitely bright, infinitely thick. For a moment that lasted forever, he was blind; a roaring filled his ears, all the sounds of the world gathered together at once. For just the length of one measureless step” (233)
“There was not a straight line to be seen anywhere except for the floor itself, as he trailed the strange man. Even the ceiling was always arched, and the walls bowed out. The halls were continuously curved, the doorways rounded, the windows perfect circles. Tilework made spirals and sinuous lines, and what seemed to be bronze metalwork set in the ceiling at intervals was all complicated scrolls. There were no pictures of anything, no wall hangings or paintings. Only patterns, and always curves” (234)
“‘He is another,’ the woman on the left whispered. ‘The strain. The strain.’
‘The savor,’ the man said. ‘It has been long’” (237)
“You will have sidestepped the thread of fate, left your fate to drift on the winds of time, and you will be killed by those who do not want that fate fulfilled” (237)
“‘To marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons!’
‘To die and live again, and live once more a part of what was!’
‘To give up half the light of the world to save the world!’” (238)
“One of you would have been bad enough, but two ta’veren at once you might have torn the connection entirely and been trapped there” (240)
“‘The Old Tongue,’ Moiraine told him. ‘They use the Old Tongue—a rather harsh dialect of it for their dealings with men’” (240)
“That world is … folded … in strange ways. I cannot be clearer. It may be that that allows them to read the thread of a human life, read the various ways it may yet be woven into the Pattern” (241)
“there was something strange about him. Something more than being ta’veren” (273)
“‘To anger the Ogier and pull the mountains down on your head.’ Everyone took its meaning as to try to do something that was impossible. Perrin thought maybe the meaning had changed with the years” (283)
“‘Once, it is said,’ Loial murmured, ‘the Waygates shone like mirrors, and those who walked the Ways walked through the sun and the sky. Gone, now. Like this grove’” (284)
“Not the Prophecies of the Dragon, Aes Sedai. The Jendai Prophecy, the prophecy of the Coramoor. Not the one you wait for and dread; the one we seek, herald if a new Age” (294)
“All—everything—the world drifted on the water and the wind. It was in the years after that the Jendai Prophecy was first spoken. We must wander the waters until the Coramoor returns, and serve him at his coming” (295)
“The Prophecy is being fulfilled. He is the Coramoor. Aes Sedai serve him. You are proof of that, that you are here in this city. That is in the Prophecy as well. The White Tower shall be broken by his name, and Aes Sedai shall kneel to wash his feet and dry them with their hair” (295)
“Our stories will not survive, in the long run. When the next Age comes” (308)
“How is the end of an Age marked? It cannot always be a cataclysm on the order of the Breaking. But then, if the Prophecies are to be believed, this one will be. That is the trouble with prophecy. The original is always in the Old Tongue, and maybe High Chant as well: if you don’t know what a thing means beforehand, there’s no way to puzzle it out. Does it mean what it says, or is it a flowery way of saying something entirely different?” (308)
“I was talking of change. My epic, if I compose it—and Loial’s book will be no more than seed, if we are both lucky. Those who know the truth will die, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren will remember something different. And their grandchildren’s grandchildren something else again. Two dozen generations, and you may be the hero of it, not Rand” (308)
“Hawkwing, young Mistress? He made an empire, all right, but do you think he did everything the books and stories and epics say he did? The way they say he did it?” (308)
“The books say he did” (309)
“‘If it pleases the Light,’ Jorin said fatalistically, ‘all will be well. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well, if it pleases the Light’” (312)
Commentator’s Note: Julian of Norwich.
“He had to move quickly, and there was no quicker way than Portal Stones. Remnants of an Age older than the Age of Legends; even Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends had not understood them, it seemed” (334)
“Any ta’veren shapes the Pattern to one degree or another, but a ta’veren such as you might rip the Age Lace for all of time” (342)
“the Time of Change is upon us” (351)
“All stands on the edge of change, now” (351)
“Change comes like an avalanche whether we want it or not. ‘It must come,’ Bair said, not sounding happy. ‘The Pattern plants us where it will’” (357)
“There is no one set path to the future. The Pattern makes the finest lace look like coarse woven sacking, or tangled string. In Tel’aran’rhiod it is possible to see some ways the future may be woven. No more than that” (361)
“Tel’aran’rhiod means the World of Dreams, or perhaps the Unseen World” (361)
“Life is uncertainty and struggle, choice and change; one who knew how her life was woven into the Pattern as well as she knew how a thread was laid into a carpet would have the life of an animal” (362)
“‘There are some places one cannot enter in Tel’aran’rhiod,’ Seana said” (362)
“Rhuidean. Ogier stedding. A few others. What happens there is shielded from a dreamwalker’s eyes” (363)
“Almost anyone can touch Tel’aran’rhiod, but few can truly enter it. Of all the Wise Ones, we four alone can dreamwalk, and your Tower has not produced a dreamwalker in nearly five hundred years. It is not a thing of the One Power, though Aes Sedai believe it is. I cannot channel, nor can Seana, yet we dreamwalk as well as Amys or Melaine” (363)
“the empty streets were broad as any he had ever seen, with wide strips of bare dirt down their centers as if trees had grown there once, and great fountains with statues. Huge buildings flanked the streets, odd flat-sided palaces of marble and crystal and cut glass, ascending hundreds of feet in steps or sheer walls”
Commentator’s Note: Are these paved roads and skyscrapers?
“‘Avendesora,’ Rand said softly. ‘The Tree of Life. It’s here’” (370)
“The same polished redstone, the same size, the same eye-wrenching corners. Along each upright ran three lines of triangles, points down” (372)
“‘Do you abide by the treaties and agreements? Do you carry iron, or instruments of music, or devices for making light?’ ‘I have none of those things,’ Mat replied slowly. This was not the same place, but this fellow asked the same questions” (373)
“The sameness made time slip into formlessness” (375)
“Most of them liked the Jenn claiming to be Aiel no better than he did” (381)
“Whoever would lead among you must come to Rhuidean and learn where we came from, and why you do not carry swords. Who cannot learn, will not live” (381)
“‘Whichever of us comes to you will lead the Aiel?’ ‘No.’ The word came thin as a whisper, but strong enough to fill every ear. It came from the dark-eyed Aes Sedai sitting in her carved chair with a blanket across her legs as if she felt cold under the broiling sun. ‘That one will come later,’ she said. ‘The stone that never falls will fall to announce his coming. Of the blood, but not raised by the blood, he will come from Rhuidean at dawn, and tie you together with bonds you cannot break. He will take you back, and he will destroy you’” (381)
“‘It is our purpose,’ Dermon replied calmly. ‘For long years we searched for this place, and now we prepare it, if not for the purpose we once thought. We do what we must, and keep faith’” (382)
“He had seen—lived—a time before the Aiel came to their Three-fold Land” (385)
“We are the only true Aiel. You have given up the Way” (386)
“‘The Trees of Life.’ When he still looked at her blankly, she shook her head. ‘Three little trees planted in barrels. They care for them almost as well as they do for themselves. When they find a place of safety, they to plant them; they say the old days will return, then. They. I said they. Very well. I am not Jenn anymore.’ She hefted the shortened spear. ‘This husband now.’ Eyeing him closely, she asked, ‘If someone stole child, would you talk of the Way of the Leaf and suffering sent to test us?’” (388)
“The columns were taking them back, into the time-lost history of the Aiel. Rand’s feet moved of their own accord. Forward. And back in time” (388)
“A spear can put food in the pots, Alijha. A sword cannot. It is forbidden by the Way” (391)
“You . . . killed? Killed men? What of the Covenant? We harm no one. No one! There is no reason good enough to justify killing another human being. None!” (392)
“We must accept what comes. Our sufferings are sent to test our faithfulness. We accept and endure! We do not murder! You have not strayed from the Way, you have abandoned it. You are Da’shain no longer. You are corrupt, and I will not have the Aiel corrupted by you. Leave us, strangers. Killers! You are not welcome in the wagons of the Aiel” (392)
“All we have left are wagons full of things the Aes Sedai will never come for” (395)
“We will be faithful to our duty!” (395)
“My greatfather used to tell me stories he heard as a boy, stories of when we lived in safety and people came to hear us sing. We mean to find a place where we can be safe, and sing again” (395)
“I have heard those old stories, too, that Aiel singing was a wondrous thing, but you know those old songs no more than I do. The songs are gone, and the old days are gone” (396)
“‘You are not Aiel,’ he said. ‘You betray everything. Whatever you are, you are no longer Aiel!’
‘We keep the Way of the Leaf as well as you, Adan’” (396)
“‘Singing,’ Someshta said. ‘Was there singing? So much is gone. The Aes Sedai say some will return. You are a Child of the Dragon, are you not?’
Jonai winced. That name had caused trouble, no less for not being true.
But how many citizens now believed the Da’shain Aiel had once served the Dragon and no other Aes Sedai?” (401)
“You Da’shain have more courage than. . . . Ten thousand Aiel linking arms and singing, trying to remind a madman of who they were and who he had been, trying to turn him with their bodies and a song” (401)
“Keep moving, always moving, until you find a place of safety, where no one can harm you” (401)
“‘Keep the Covenant, Jonai. If the Da’shain lose everything else, they keep the Way of the Leaf. Promise me.’
‘Of course, Aes Sedai,’ he said, shocked. The Covenant was the Aiel, and the Aiel were the Covenant; to abandon the Way would be to abandon what they were” (402)
“He found an old shocklance … Once there would have been other ways to carry them, jo-cars and jumpers, hoverflies and huge sho-wings” (402)
Commentator’s Note: This is future tech.
“We are Da’shain Aiel, and we obey the Aes Sedai” (402)
“A dozen rooted chora cuttings in clay pots sat behind the wagon seat, to be planted when they found a place of safety. A foolish thing to carry, perhaps, but no wagon was without its potted cuttings. Something from a time long gone; symbol of a better time to come. People needed hope, and symbols” (403)
“All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well” (403)
Commentator’s Note: See also p. 312, the Atha’an Miere and Julian of Norwich.
“the women had decided his voice was finally deep enough to join in the seed singing” (404)
“the Nym were older than anyone. Some said the Nym never died, not so long as plants grew” (404)
“We have a report that Lews Therin led the Companions on a strike at Shayol Ghul this morning at dawn. Something is disrupting communications, but the report is the Bore has been sealed, with most of the Forsaken on the other side. Maybe all of them” (405)
Commentator’s Note: Long distance communications!
“A city without choras would seem bleak as wilderness” (407)
“Jo-cars hummed quietly down the street, and a great white sho-wing darted across the sky, carrying citizens to Comelle or Tzora or somewhere. He seldom used the sho-wings, himself—if he needed to go very far, an Aes Sedai usually Traveled with him—but tonight he would” (407)
Commentator’s Note: More scifi.
“his eyes fixed on the Sharom; the white sphere, a thousand feet in diameter, floated as high above the blue and silver domes of the Collam Daan” (408)
“Mierin had said today was the day. She said she had found a new source for the One Power. Female Aes Sedai and male would be able to tap the same source, not separate halves. What men and women could do united would be even greater now that there would be no differences. And today she and Beidomon would tap it for the first time—the last time men and women would work together wielding a different Power” (408)
“The Sharom broke apart like an egg and began to drift down, falling, an obsidian inferno. Darkness spread across the sky, swallowing the sun in unnatural night, as if the light of those flames was blackness” (408)
“The image still drifted through his head, that huge sphere, burning black, falling. Did I really see the hole being drilled into the Dark One’s prison? Did I? He stood at the edge of the glass columns, staring out at Avendesora. A chora tree. A city is a wilderness without choras. And now there’s only one” (409)
“He will come from Rhuidean at dawn, and tie you together with bonds you cannot break. He will take you back, and he will destroy you” (413)
“I will not ruin a Waygate, Perrin. We grew the Ways and tended them. Perhaps they can be cleansed someday. I cannot ruin a Waygate” (421)
“I think perhaps the change will not be what we have always believed” (427)
“Moiraine had suggested that the wolf dream was the same as something called Tel’aran’rhiod, and then would say no more” (429)
“He is here in the flesh, and he can kill.
‘In the flesh? You mean not just dreaming? How can he be here in the flesh?’
I do not know. It is a thing dimly remembered from long ago, come again as so much else … If we die here, we die forever” (432)
“‘You can talk to wolves? Now that is a thing long lost in legend. So that is how you are here. I should have known. The tower? It is a doorway, archer, to the realms of the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn.’ She said the names as if he should recognize them. When he looked at her blankly, she said, ‘Did you ever play the game called Snakes and Foxes?’
‘All children do. At least, they do in the Two Rivers. But they give it when they get old enough to realize there’s no way to win.’
‘Except to break the rules,’ she said. ‘Courage to strengthen, fire to blind, music to daze, iron to bind.’
‘That’s a line from the game. I don’t understand. What does it have to do with this tower?’
‘Those are the ways to win against the snakes and the foxes. The game is a remembrance of old dealings. It does not matter so long as you stay away from the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn. They are not evil the way the Shadow is evil, yet they are so different from humankind they might as well be. They are not to be trusted, archer. Stay clear of the Tower of Ghenjei. Avoid the World of Dreams, if you can. Dark things walk’” (433)
“The day of the Last Hunt draws near. We will run together in the Last Hunt” (434)
“the wide, rough track called the Quarry Road … Why ‘quarry’ no one in the Two Rivers knew” (438)
“Ta’veren truly do pull other people’s lives into their own pattern” (500)
“I cannot say you are shifting the world on its foundations, as Rand al’Thor is, but the Two Rivers is surely moving. I wonder if you have a clue as to where you are moving it” (507)
“Ta’veren does not mean immortal” (509)
“Dawn and the Aiel. He Who Comes With the Dawn” (516)
“Behold what has never been seen before. A Car’a’carn has been chosen, a chief of chiefs. Born of a Maiden, he has come with the dawn from Rhuidean, according to prophecy, to unite the Aiel! The fulfillment of prophecy has begun!” (519)
“I think it is a matter of bloodlines. I believe I saw through the eyes of my ancestors, and you yours” (523)
“Moiraine sometimes talked of the complexity of Age Lace, the Pattern of an Age, woven by the Wheel of Time from the thread of human lives” (524)
“How many more points like that had there been, where a single decision one way or another affected the weave of the Pattern for thousands of years? A thousand times a thousand tiny branching points, a thousand times that many, all twitching the Pattern into a different design. He himself was a walking branching point, and maybe Mat and Perrin, too. What they did or did not do would send ripples ahead through the years, through the Ages” (524)
“All the wreckage of the Breaking of the World seemed gathered here in the place called the Aiel Waste” (546)
“Coincidences made him uneasy, when the Pattern produced coincidence, the Wheel seemed to be forcing events. I’m beginning to sound like a bloody Aes Sedai” (631)
“He wondered if there ever had been a song, or if the Tuatha’an had begun their endless journey seeking something else” (647)
“Today they sang, about a battle so long ago that it had left no memory but this song in the Two Rivers” (650)
“A Waygate was destroyed once … it was very difficult, and required thirteen Aes Sedai working together with a sa’angreal. Another attempt she wrote of, by only nine, during the Trolloc Wars, damaged the Gate in such a way that the Aes Sedai were pulled into—” (660)
“‘The Waygate. Yes. I cannot destroy it, but if I remove both Avendesora leaves completely, they will die.’ He grimaced at the thought. ‘The only means of opening the Gate again will be for the Elders to bring the Talisman of Growing. Though I suppose an Aes Sedai could cut a hole in it’” (661)
“She saw no images, no auras, around either; there were always images and auras around Aes Sedai” (722)
“‘The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,’ she had told him just that morning, voice coolly calm, ageless face serene, but dark eyes hot as she stared at him over Aviendha’s head, ‘but a fool can strangle himself in the Pattern. Have a care you do not weave a noose for your neck’” (741)
“That is what The Karaethon Cycle the Prophecies of the Dragon, says, is it not? That you must die to save fools who will heave a sigh of relief at your death. No, I would not accept that for all your power and more” (744)
“‘Does the future chafe you, Rand?’ Moiraine said quietly when the gleeman was gone. ‘Prophecies speak in flowery, hidden language. They do always mean what they seem to say.’
‘The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,’ he told her. ‘I will do what I must. Remember that, Moiraine. I will do what I must’” (745)
“Natael returned the next evening, and the next, and the next, always talking about the epic he would compose, but he displayed a morbid streak, digging for how Rand meant to face madness and death. His tale was meant to be a tragedy, it appeared” (745)
“In stories, things always happened as the hero planned, seemingly when he wanted them to happen. In real life it rarely occurred that way, even for a ta’veren with prophecy supposedly working for him. In real life it was scratch and hope, and luck if you found more than half a loaf where you needed a whole. Yet a part of his plan was following the path he had hoped for. The most dangerous part” (761)
“‘When you show the Dragons, they will know you. There is no way to imitate the Dragons of Rhuidean.’ Had Moiraine’s eyes flickered? ‘You are the one prophesied. I will support you, and Bruan certainly, and Dhearic, of the Reyn Aiel’” (762)
“We have waited three thousand years for the man who bears two Dragons. When you show your arms, none will doubt you are the one sent to unite us.’ And break them; but he did not mention that” (762)
“‘What we want?’ Melaine snapped; her long hair swung as she tossed her head. ‘The prophecy says ‘a remnant of a remnant shall be saved. What we want, Rand al’Thor, Car’a’carn, is to save as many of our people as we can. Whatever your blood, and your face, you have no feeling for us. I will make you know our blood for yours if I have to lay the—’” (769)
“Prophecy is most dangerous when you try to make it happen. Did you not learn that in Tear? The Pattern weaves itself around you, but when you try to weave it, even you cannot hold it. Force the Pattern too tight, and pressure builds. It can explode wildly in every direction. Who can say how long before it settles to focus on you again, or what will happen before it does?” (777)
“‘There are no customs to cover me, Rhuarc.’ You could have cracked rocks with Rand’s voice, or put a skim of ice on wine. ‘I have to make new customs’” (779)
“It has been handed down among dreamwalkers since the first that no one must ever be brought into the dream. It is said that that was the way of the Shadow in the last days of the Age of Legends” (799)
“‘Dead? Those of us who are bound to the Wheel are not dead as others are dead. Where better for us to wait until the Wheel weaves us out in new lives than in the World of Dreams?’ Birgitte laughed suddenly. ‘I begin to talk as if I were a philosopher. In almost every life I can remember I was born a simple girl who took up the bow. I am an archer, no more’” (806)
“I cannot touch the world of flesh unless the Horn calls me again. Or else the Wheel weaves me out. If it did this moment, you would find only an infant mewling at her mother’s breast. As for Falme, the Horn had called us; we were not there as you were, in the flesh. That is why the Power could not touch us. Here, all is part of the dream, and the One Power could destroy me as easily as you. More easily. I told you; I am an archer, a sometime soldier, no more” (806)
“According to the precepts, we may speak to none who know they are in Telaran’rbiod. And yet, evil walks the dream as well as the world of flesh; you who fight it attract me. Even knowing I can do almost nothing, I find myself wanting to help you. But I cannot. It violates the precepts, precepts which have held me for so many turns of the Wheel that in my oldest, faintest memories I know I had already lived a hundred times, or a thousand. Speaking to you violates precepts as strong as law” (807)
“‘A simple story, but I think we have spun it out in a thousand variations.’
Cain ignored Nynaeve as though she did not exist. ‘The precepts exist for a reason, Birgitte. Nothing but strife and trouble has ever come from breaking them’” (807)
“When the Horn calls us, we will fight. When the Wheel weaves us, we will fight. Not until then!” (807)
“Once I was free, the first thing I did was seek information about those last days. Last years, really. There are a good many fragments here and there that make no sense to anyone who does not have some idea to begin with. The Age of Legends. Such a quaint name you have given my time. Yet even your wildest tales no more than hint at the half. I had lived over two hundred years when the Bore was opened, and I was still young, for an Aes Sedai. Your ‘legends’ are but pale imitations of what we could do. Why…” (849)
”. . . travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are. . . .” (850)
“People fight for you who do not know it, any more than you know them. You do not realize what it means that you force the form of the Age Lace, do you? The ripples of your actions, the ripples of your very existence, spread across the Pattern to change the weave of life-threads of which you will never be aware. The battle is far from yours alone. Yet you stand in the heart of this web in the Pattern. Should you fail, and fall, all fails and falls” (887)
“Wash the spears—Life is a dream.
Wash the spears—All dreams must end” (889)
“Mierin. A name remembered from the glass columns. The woman who had found the Dark One’s prison in the Age of Legends, who had bored into it. Had she known what it was? How had she escaped that fiery doom he had seen? Had she given herself to the Dark One even then?” (913)