Quotes from Robin Hobb

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved. Beloved. He could not say the word, but I knew it. So did his Fool.

It would be ironic,' I panted to Burrich and Dutiful, 'if after all these years of longing to die, he finally perished in an attempt to live.' Burrich snorted. 'We all perish in our last attempt to live.

You steal the now of my life away, when you constantly fear that tomorrow will bring my death. Your fears clutch cold at me and snatch all my pleasure in the day's warmth from me.

Have you ever stood on a sandy beach when the tide is coming in? Felt the waves come up around your feet and suck the sand from under you. That's my life now. With every day, I feel I sink deeper into uncertainty." p. 628 The Fool to Fitz

There is no such thing as an extraordinary coincidence. There is only destiny.

Men cannot grieve as dogs do.

There were times when taking vengeance for the dead seemed too high a price for abandoning the living. I

It was well to impress one's enemies with a show of strength. It was even better to be sure one's friends remembered it as well.

Who had that young man been who had thought himself so old and worldly-wise? He was a stranger to me now.

The weapon we throw away today is the one at our throats tomorrow

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

Other men might dream of high honors or riches or deeds of valor sung by minstrels. I wanted to come to a small cot as light faded, to sit in a chair by a fire, my back aching from work, my hands rough with toil, and hold a little girl in my lap while a woman who loved me told me of her day.

A man has to have a purpose in life. I know this now, but it took me the first score years of my life to learn it. In that I scarcely think myself unique.

As dye soaks fibres, drawn into them to change their colour forever, so does a memory, stinging or sweet, change the fibre of a man's character.

Death stalks us, and he is ever sure of his kill. It is not a thing to dwell on, but it is something we all know, in our guts and bones. All save humans.

The Six Duchies would fall. The world would end. We went to fetch blankets.

Who loves you or who you love is not as significant as who you are. Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that." Amber looked out to sea again. "And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.

The only lie I ever told her was my undoing, and hers, and the stablemaster's. Such is the power of a lie given to one you love.

Do you begrudge me that I am who I truly am? Should I pretend otherwise for the sake of pleasing you? If I did, it would be a lie. Would you rather love a lie than know me as I truly am?

Cats do not enjoy being reminded of debts. Cats don not incur in debts.

She could be shaped by her past without being trapped by it" p. 283

if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault.

We'd had a message from Just, the first to reach us in many a month. He and Hearth had left home almost three years ago. With youth's fine disregard for the concerns of their elders, they'd sent messages only sporadically.