Quotes from Robin Hobb

How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone's life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.

All events, no matter how earth-shaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their ploughing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

His heart had pounded with joy at the thought that he might catch her, might playfully hold her in his arms, for just a moment. They were children, I suddenly saw, children at play, only a handful of years older than I was now. They had never grown older, neither one of them, not really. All their lives she had remained that girl to him, that wondrous girl just a few years older than he was, but so worldly wise, so female to all that was so male in his life.

Yet, all things must pass, but especially time, and with the months and then the years, I came slowly to have a place in the scheme of things.

Too much on my mind. Too many directions to think in all at once. I sometimes feel that if I had time to focus my mind on just one problem, I could solve it. And then go on to solve the others." "Every man believes that. It isn't so. Slay the ones you can as they come to hand, and after a while you get used to the ones you can do nothing about.

Seldom can one hate a person if one understand that person.

I want to go home,' he muttered as he totered down the road beside me. 'Me, too,' I told him. And yet it was not Buckkeep that came to my mind, but a meadow overlooking the sea, and a girl in bright red skirts who beckoned me. A time, rather than a place. No road led there anymore.

We live in our bodies. An assault on that outside fortress of the mind leaves scars that may not show, but never heal.

Have you ever suddenly realized that there was someone you loved, but presently did not like very much?

There are few things so tender as a man's dignity.

Dragons. A sky full of dragons.

Die in your dreams, wake up insane.

Suddenly, everything was easy and clear. I simply did whatever Chade told me to do, and trusted to him to have it turn out right. My spirit rode high on the crest of that wave of faith, and sometime during the night it occurred to me: this was what Burrich had had from Chivalry, and what he missed so badly.

opinions may have truth in them but that truth must be free of opinions.

You can't play in shit and not get some on you.

I have said it before. You are too cautious, Fitz. What if this, what if that? You hide from trouble that may never knock at our door.

I know you think me foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then I must be Foolish.

He lives day-to-day now, just as we do, fumbling forward down the path to the future.

You should go with him, Nighteyes. You should go with Bee. If we end here, then I meet the end with you. As you ended with me. How is the hunting where you are? It will be better with you. I'm coming to you, my brother.

Be content with you own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.' She frowned up at him. 'Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?' 'Perhaps people have a right to their pain,' he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, 'Perhaps they even need it.

Fate rushes down upon us! The time drags and the days plod past, lulling us into thinking that the doom we fear will always so delay. Then, abruptly, the dark days we have all predicted are upon us, and the time when we could have turned dire fate aside has passed. How old must I be before I learn? There is no time; there is never any time. Tomorrow may never come, but todays are linked inexorably in a chain, and now is always the only time we have to divert disaster.

The man who worries about what will next be happening to him loses this moment in dread of the next, and poisons the next with pre-judgement.

But we are two old men, who have grown old together. Sometimes that is a greater closeness. We have come through time to your day and age. We can talk together, quietly, and share memories of a time that exists no more. I can tell you how it was, but it is not the same. It is like being two foreigners, trapped in a land we have come to, unable to return to our own, and having only each other to confirm the reality of the place we once lived.