Quotes from Robin Hobb

The death of Nighteyes gutted me. I walked wounded through my life in the days that followed, unaware of just how mutilated I was. I was like the man who complains of the itching of his severed leg. The itching distracts from the immense knowledge that one will forever after hobble through life.

Some calls you cannot ignore, no matter how it may tear your heart.

A leaf turns in the wind, and you suddenly have a different perception of what colour it is.

Cats talk to whomever they please.

The separate parts of my life became like beads and I the string that ran through them all. I believe if I had ever paused to consider the intricacy of all I did to keep those parts separate, I would have found it impossible. But I was young then, much younger than I suspected, and somehow I found the energy and time to do and be it all.

I truly wanted to live a life in which I could make my own choices, independent of the 'duties' of my birth and position. It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I please only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways.

Don't go mooning after the stars, when the wide sea is all around you. It's a sky of its own, you know.

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

He thought perhaps it was a woman's way, to come out of such a storm of emotion and pain as if she were a ship emerging onto calm seas. She had seemed, not at peace, but emptied of sorrow. As if she had run out of that particular emotion and no other one arose to take its place.

Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.

Your future. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it.

Why does the forbidden always add that edge of sweetness?

We are whole

And a Fool is supposed to be wise?

there was no point in sighing after what I could not have. It only distracted me from what I did have.

We were speaking of people living their dreams, and I said that few do, and even fewer enjoy the experience. For too many, when they get their dream, they discover it is not what they wanted. Or the dream is bigger than their abilities, and all ends in bitterness.

We did hard things for each other. Risked our lives. Gave up our lives and faced death, and then faced life again. You might be surprised to find that facing life can be much harder than facing death.

I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity.

Few things have such sharp edges as the careless words of a boy.

That night I grasped another piece of the puzzle that Burrich had always been to me. For there is a very strange peace in giving over your judgment to someone else, to saying to them, "You lead and I will follow, and I will trust entirely that you will not lead me to death or harm.

it's strange, isn't it, how you don't know how big a part of you someone is until they're threatened? And then you think you can't possibly go on if something happens to them, but the most frightening part is that, actually, you will go on, you'll have to go on, with them or without them. There's just no telling what you'll become

Now, anyone with two thoughts in their mind can see that no future is set in stone. An infinite number of futures bud at the end of every moment, and each one of them can be changed by a falling rose petal.

Once I got away from him, I was smart enough to stay away from him. To hunt that one is as wise as to go hunting a porcupine. I cannot leave this alone, Nighteyes. I understand. I am the same about porcupines.

some secrets beg to be betrayed. The secret of undeclared love is like that.