Quotes from Robin Hobb

You want a mate who will follow your dream. You don't want to give up your own ambitions to make someone else's life possible.' 'I supposed that's true,' Althea admitted reluctantly. An instant later she demanded, 'Why is that so wrong?' 'It isn't,' Amber assured her, A moment later she added wickedly, 'As long as you're male.

But if she is alone now, it is because she chose to be alone, not because someone decreed if for her. Her life is hers to live, not yours to repair.

Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path.

I lied!' I spat my whisper at him. 'I knew you read my journal. I knew you read my dreams. I wrote there what I thought would hurt you most! I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!' I took a breath. 'He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us!

My blood will only buy you that fool's regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.

I am the King's Fool. He is the King-In-Wating. Let him wait.

If I enter the room as you are fastening your shoe, I can say, "There will be a lovely moon tonight," and then you will call it to mind. But before I call it forth for you, you have forgotten the moon. One can swiftly understand that for most moments of our lives, we have forgotten almost all of the world around us, except for what currently claims our interest.

You won't even see what is put right on the table before you. Men. If it was raining soup you'd be out there with a fork.

Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face.

For a very brief period I was happy, and, an even rarer gift, I knew I was happy.

Such a storm of emotions as humans can evoke, all on the basis of imagination," the dragon observed condescendingly. In a more reflective voice she asked, "Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.

It's not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn't offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don't know how.

Nothing is really lost. Shapes change. But it's never completely gone.

What does who call me when?

When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.

A wise old man taught me that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. Persuasion, not force, works best and lasts longest.

To bond to any animal was to promise oneself that future pain

Not babies perhaps. But I know about young things. Foals, puppies, calves, piglets. Even hunting cats. I know if you want them to trust you, you touch them when they are small. Gently, but firmly, so they believe in your strength, too. You don't shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather. You don't take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline.

It doesn't matter who a man's father is. Your parents made a child, but it's up to you to make the man you'll be.

Those were some astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father's talent for it.

You have a wild young heart. Right now, it is like a caged bird that batters itself against the bars. To struggle harder will only hurt you more. Wait, be patient. Your time will come to fly. And when it does, you must be strong, not bloodied and weary.

I passed that day in pleasure, which is to say, in the sort of work I wanted to do rather than the work that I thought I ought to be doing.

It was hard to reconcile the drumbeats and lifted voices in the night with my memories of flames and the screams of dying men. How could humanity range so effortlessly from the sublime to the savage and back again?

That was Verity's way. MOnths had passed since we had last spoken but he took no times for greetings. Chade said it was a lack in him, that he didn't make his men feel their importance to him. I think he believed that if anything significant had happened to me, someone would have told him. He had a bluff heartiness to him that I enjoyed, an attitude that things must be going well unless someone ahd told him otherwise.